


Little Lullabies

by furiedheart



Category: Chris Hemsworth - Fandom, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, hiddlesworth - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bullying, Divorced parents, Dry Fucking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Singing, Sleep Deprivation, Sleep Disorder, Speech impediment, Stuttering, Teenagers, physical bullying, very brief contemplation of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:34:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4808141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiedheart/pseuds/furiedheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>17 year-old Tom and 19 year-old Chris both suffer from disorders they feel alienate them from others. And then they meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Lullabies

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of me in this one. It's very personal. I think that's why it took me so long to write. I hope you all like it <3
> 
> There was a piece of artwork that I carried with me everywhere while writing this. I even had it as my phone wallpaper. It's of Thor, but I used it as inspiration for Chris. It's really super beautiful and I tried finding the original artist but couldn't. It's listed below. 
> 
> Thank you to my beta, [duskyhuedladysatan](http://duskyhuedladysatan.tumblr.com), for reading at a moment's notice, for encouraging me, for supporting me, and being ever so patient. You are, my dear, the very best. 
> 
> [This](http://half-ancient.tumblr.com/post/96366626473/going-berserk-x) and [this](http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32800000/-Chris-Hemsworth-chris-hemsworth-32810637-500-665.png) and [this](http://half-ancient.tumblr.com/post/111574336758) is Chris. [This](http://half-ancient.tumblr.com/post/124945991398/duskyhuedladysatan-isnt-this-gifset-perfect-for) is sweet Tom.
> 
> "Come with all your shame, come with your swollen heart. I've never seen anything more beautiful than you." ~Warsan Shire
> 
> “What is the finding of love, but a voice answering a voice?” ~D. Antoinette Foy
> 
> “Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with.” ~Robert Brault

 

**Tom:**

I haven’t spoken in exactly nine days. No one’s noticed – not that I’m surrounded by people or anything – not even my mom. But she’s used to my silence. I remember when I was younger, probably five or six, I would go weeks without saying a word. It was just too easy after seeing the look of exasperation on my mother’s face whenever I tried to ask for a juice box or what was for dinner. She’d stand there in the kitchen with her spatula and faded apron and stare at me as the words tripped up on my tongue. It was the glance-away and little groan that always made me feel the worst. Like she’d given up on me. Like I wasn’t worth the extra time spent to hear me out.

Out. Out. They never came out.

_I don’t believe this. Just spit it out._

But I never could. I would usually retreat to my room and play my Nintendo, the blocky cube characters distracting me enough from how hurt I was. I couldn’t – still can’t – help that I stammered. It’s something I can’t control. Some words tumble out just fine, smoothly even, and others – usually certain sounds and letter combinations – will snarl together and barb themselves on the tip of my tongue, refusing to budge.

Being an only child aids in my silence. I dive headfirst into books and movies, loving in particular soundtracks that I download and listen to while I wash my clothes or do my homework. The privacy also allows me to sing at will, and often.

Singing is an exception to my stuttering. The moments I can sing are the best. There’s something about melody and the lilting way to voice the words that makes my stuttering simply _vanish_. It’s magic, I swear. I can sing out more words in a three minute song than I would ever speak in an entire day, and it’s a secret, thrilling pleasure to do so. I can carry a note pretty well, too. Not that anyone knows.

School is another matter. I can’t very well pass my time singing in the hallways. I’d get beat up more often, for starters. And laughed at. And mocked. I’m silent there too, speaking only when absolutely necessary, and usually drenched in a cold sweat. Oral presentations are my worst nightmare. I’m a whiz at tests and papers, and usually I can get by doing all the work in a group as long as the other members do all the talking. But solo?

It’s not like I don’t practice. I do, trying to convince the rolling muscle of my tongue to simply let loose the sounds, unwind and give me that freedom _please._ But the more I concentrate on the act, the more the signals in my brain fritz and sizzle, and my lips and tongue and breaths crash together, tripping me up, making me a fool.It’s not as bad as it used to be. I could go weeks without making a peep when I was a child. And now, I can sometimes get away with complete sentences if I’m calm and comfortable enough. But add in excitement or nervousness or a pair of eyes trained right at me – not to mention _dozens_ of eyes – and I’m toast. My only consolation is that I have one year left of high school. After that, I can choose not to present anything to anyone, ever.

I’ve considered speech therapy, but my mom can’t afford it and I don’t want to put that extra burden on her. Single and working two jobs, she’s usually a wreck once back home, eating the dinner I make with her eyes half-closed with fatigue.

It’s easier during the summer, like now, because I become a permanent fixture in my room with my video games and my books and no one around. Although, I do make exceptions for sunsets. Sometimes, I escape out my window and jump on my skateboard and whip down to the tracks. There’s a copse of trees that border the northern edge that I like to hide in, climbing the one I’ve marked with a blue button wedged into one of its ancient crags. Snatching up my board, I walk in with my face to the canopies, smiling when a leaf brushes my cheek. I like to think it’s how they say hello.

The crash of the surf, and the call of seagulls and rich salt-laced air are great, but just a sliver of the sea can be seen if I crane my neck enough from the ground. It’s not until I haul myself through the topmost branches, easily _thousands_ of feet in the air, that I get the widest view, all treetops, and farther out the long stretch of indigo water.

It’s the way the sun descends, you see. Because too far up in the sky it’s this big marred slate of TOO BRIGHT and you have to squint or turn away in order to continue living. But once it’s sunk low enough to press gently against the far lip of the horizon, then all the world starts a glitter dance, like bits of broken sea glass lit with flame. Only, it’s a gentle fire. Easier on the eyes, and you can stare at it for longer. The warmth radiates right up into your bones, casting the treetops with the scent of sap and loam and wet salt, and you could breathe in big and deep and feel alive and rooted.

I like sitting up on the highest branch, my legs dangling, ear buds plugged into my phone. And I’ll sing. To the sky, to the other trees, to the sea. To the sun. Not crazy loud, never. Because I’ll never forget that one time a group of boys – recently graduated and sporting wispy beards - came stumbling in through the tree trunks below me, long-armed and strong-jawed enough to make my mouth water, their drunken banter forcing me to curl up against the sturdy branch and pray they didn’t find my board tucked among the roots. And I watched them as they sat in a circle below me, talking about life as if they’ve lived it for very long, passing cans of beers around that they’d had hidden in their pockets. Cigarette smoke wafted up and stung my eyes, but I held still, listening to the curled cadence of their deep voices, wondering what it might feel like if I pressed my lips to their throats and felt them vibrate my name.

I never returned to the trees during a weekend again, warily mindful of my instinct to trust and how hard I work to disobey it, curious about whether I might approach them should I ever see them again.

I need to be careful out here on the edge of town, by myself, with my non-voice.

But when alone, I will sing only loud enough to hear my own voice thrumming in my chest, behind my throat, on my cooperating tongue. I can probably communicate entirely through song lyrics if I felt comfortable enough singing them to someone. But even I’m not that fanciful.

I talk to myself a lot, actually. Usually I can abide my own stuttering if I do it alone, but I can’t help the numbing rage that burns through me when I stutter to someone else. The self-loathing is toxic. Still, I’ll talk aloud if only for the sake of hearing my own voice. Singing will carry me to sleep or to fantasies where I’m not like this, visions in my head of friends and maybe even a boy. But speaking to myself has an entirely different purpose, ever since my voice changed.

It used to crack a lot, especially when I sang. God, I hated it. Made myself blush with embarrassment. But somewhere around the autumn of age fifteen I grew four inches and opened my mouth to a deep river of charcoal, smooth and bottomless. Gone were the cracks and squeaks; in their place a lower register, a baritone I felt shy testing out standing in the corner of my room, hand inching lower to my groin, turned on by my own voice.

I’m so happy it’s stuck around.

Despite the lack of daily drama from the typical school day, somehow things have a way of making the rounds during the lazy weeks of summer. The newest gossip on the block is the return of one of the neighborhood’s long-lost sons. He wasn’t literally lost, from what I understand, but he had been living elsewhere with his mother for years and now was back home with his father permanently. I haven’t seen him yet. I don’t really remember him from when he used to live here before, but that was probably more than six, seven years ago. I would have been only about ten or eleven myself, still learning about the impatience of others and the relief found in solitude. I wonder about the move. Away and back. Seems an odd thing to do to a teenager, even if he was now only just barely. Must be something with the parents, maybe there was trouble there.

Rumor has it the boy is a canvas of tattoos and has his hair long, a perpetual squint in his eyes. I can’t help but think of James Dean, but maybe less broody. But I don’t know how trustworthy the pack of girls at the park can be, the ones I eavesdropped on. They could have exaggerated, for all I know.

In any case, I plan on visiting the trees today, saying hi to the sun. I have to pass by the house this boy lives in now, and maybe I’ll scope the place out, see if I catch a glimpse of him.

**Chris:**

I haven’t slept in almost twenty-six hours. The longest I’ve gone is forty-one, and that was only because I’m pretty sure I rammed my head into the wall and knocked myself out. All I remember is waking the next morning sprawled out on the floor of my room with a bruise and giant knot on my forehead, feeling hung over even though I’ve technically never been. If anything, I have a ways to go this time and I’m not looking forward to it.

The disorder developed on its own, quietly, sneakily, when I was sixteen. Hours between sleep began to lengthen, my appetite would flare and wane according to random hours of the day, energy levels fluctuating faster than I could keep track of. It was around the same time my mom met Frank and he started living with us. For the longest time it had only been me and her after we left my dad when I was twelve. They were having problems, whatever. Not my issue. Moving away was not what I wanted, new schools and friends and environments, leaving my dad. None of which helped my anxiety and sleep deprivation. The insomnia set in and I often found myself lying in bed with my eyes on the ceiling. I would think of _everything._ If I would graduate high school. If I would go to college. If I would wake up next time I fell asleep. What my mom was doing in her room with that man.

I started taking online surveys for money, awake all hours of the night surfing the net. I saved as much as I could and then last January I went with my cash to a tattoo parlor downtown and got what I’ve been wanting for ages: a sleeve from shoulder to wrist. It took multiple visits and a good show of gritted teeth, but it was done and it is beautiful to me. I’ve only been able to afford the one arm, including shoulder and part of my chest, but I’ve been trying to find a job since I moved back with my dad a week ago. I want my other arm just as inked, just as permanent. Proof that I’m not made of air. That I have weight and I won’t slip up into the clouds in all my fatigue.

I worry about that sometimes, in the moments my mind is a fuzzy lightbulb blinking on and off, flashes just off to the side, seconds from shorting out and leaving me in this black void where things might happen that I don’t remember. Like why I’m back with my dad to begin with. What I supposedly did.

_Sleep deprived people are violent, Craig. They can be…triggered into easy violence._

From where I’d eavesdropped at the top of the stairs, my mom had sounded tired. Then again, she always did when she talked to my dad. Still, being the topic of conversation between them made me uncomfortable and I’d quickly retreated to my room.

Maybe my mom had been scared. Maybe she thought my dad could control me easier if I ever fell into another episode like before. Only, I couldn’t remember doing anything to anyone. Did I have anger? Sure. Easy temper? Probably. But that was why, in addition to tattooing myself to the earth, I began working out like crazy. I wanted to be heavy and strong and unable to shoot myself into the sky should I come to believe eternal sleep was better than the short blips I get now. Are there groups out there for people like me?

Hi. My name is Chris. I’m eighteen and I can’t sleep.

My dad’s house is quiet, and I like that. If I was the sleeping sort, that is. I grew up here, but something about it is different, lonelier. Books strewn about, a few miniature wooden ships sit on a high shelf, another mid-assembly on the coffee table. Seems my dad’s gotten into some new hobbies.

Quiet. Everywhere.

Even now, sitting at the front window, the wicker chair creaking beneath me as I roll it front and back, there’s nothing but bird chatter and the rush of the ocean a little farther off than I cared to explore since being back. Were my eyes drooping? Should I try lying down?

A rattling, grating noise brings me round, my eyes zooming into focus and flitting up to the window, outside of which a boy on a skateboard flies past. He careens down the road and maneuvers the corner just in front of my house in one smooth arc, the wind making his blond curls flutter and bounce. He’s slurping on a straw stuck inside a plastic soda bottle, white earphones stuck into his head. And maybe it’s my imagination but I can swear he’s eyeing my house under his lashes, lips pursed as he guzzles his drink.

My eyes begin to sting and I rub them half-heartedly. Lack of sleep always dries them out. When I open them again the kid is gone, not even a stray leaf twisting in his wake. No jean shorts and dark purple tank, no skinny arms and long neck. I sigh and let my head hang back on the chair, my sight once more filled with ceiling.

Something buzzes up my spine and settles under my scalp, fingers drumming on itchy wicker, heel jangling against the worn carpet.

The quiet is huge. There’s a pulse in it somewhere.

I finally push to my feet and head out the door.

**Tom:**

There was nothing much to see, only a vague shape distorted by the streaks of sunlight on the glass. Could have been anyone.

I throw my empty bottle of soda into a bin propped open on someone’s curb and drop my foot to kick at the ground. The day is very warm, moist and sticky; even the breeze feels like a fire draft from somewhere in one of Tolkien’s burning wastelands.

I cross through another neighborhood, ducking a baseball as middle-schoolers cheered on the hitter running base to base in the haphazard diamond drawn with chalk into the street. There’s a woman pumping gas at the 7/11, a child wailing from the backseat. I intersect to the university and veer toward the practice fields where, to my great luck, the soccer team is practicing shirtless. Torsos tight and dripping, the men dart over the field, a black and white checkered ball tossed between feet so fast they blur. Deep-voiced shouts, whistles and a flag, I stare with my mouth dropped open, jealous suddenly of the sunlight that got to dance bright licks across those flat chests and bellies.

One of the front wheels of my board snags on a crack in the pavement and I’m suddenly pitched forward, crashing to the ground and skidding several feet. Hands thrown out to stop myself, I groan and sit up as blood beads in my palms. Pain lances up my elbow and I lift it up, craning my neck to see it properly. Some skin is missing. My knees are okay, as is my face, but I glance around quickly, terribly embarrassed. The woman pumping gas across the street has her hand shaded over her eyes and looking my way. I duck my head down, slide my eyes to the field where the boys are practicing, but thankfully none seemed to have noticed.

Standing fast, I grab my board and jump on it again, kicking to gain speed and distance from the 7/11 and those sweating boys.

The train tracks look vacant so I flip up my board and snatch it in one hand, trying to ignore the stings. I dig around in my pocket for my phone to select a new playlist, jumping over the scarred iron beams and over to the other side, closest to the edge of the forest. I glance around behind me but see no one. I head in deeper, the darkness cool here under the canopies, crickets and bird chatter rising up everywhere. Near the cliffs, I find my tree, digging around the giant roots to bury my board and layering it over with leaves to hide it. Bunching the toes of my shoe against the broken bark of the tree, I seize one of the lower branches and start my climb up. Blood twists in both directions on my arm, my elbow smarting from my fall, but I ignore it and keep going. 

I pant words into tree bark, free flowing and unbroken, a perfectly sung utterance. “And oh babe. Can you tell what’s on my…tongue? Can you guess that I’ll be gone? With the twilight—.”

Something scurries to my right and I break off, arms straining, but seeing nothing I keep moving. I haul myself over the top branch and balance carefully on the balls of my feet before lowering myself to sit on the thickest part. Already the blood on my arm is drying, long rivers of black ink on my skin. It looks like lightning in the sky, so pretty. I take a picture with my phone and then open my palm and take a picture of the angry gouges and the beads of blood.

 _Kill and Run_ pops into my ears. I’ve always loved Sia’s voice, dark and husky. It’s scratchy on some notes, and I find that so endearing. No studio editing.

I lean against the trunk and watch the sun’s descent, the ocean winking at me. “But the snow is too loud…follow the hands as they move, trying to make out your mood, but my brain doesn’t want to. Hide. Close the door. Silent call for you. What have I done to you? Kill and run. Kill and run. I’m one of the dirty guns—.”

 _Be Still_. _The Boxer_. _Painters._ _American._ I sing them all, legs swinging under me, fishing the ball of twine that I keep stored in the hollowed knot a little above my head. I’m sure a squirrel or a bird shares this cubby hole with me, sometimes finding the string chewed and bunched together, but I don’t mind.

I wish my earphones weren’t busted. They’re the only pair I have. One of the wires must have broken back in May from my most recent run-in with some of the boys at school. I need to buy a new pair, and soon.

I make two bracelets and a long necklace, rooting around my pocket for the silver charms I bought at the crafts store at the mall. I slink a sun, a moon, and a star onto the necklace, watching as they slide down the rough twine to meet with a clink at the middle. They dangle there, catching the last of the sunset. On the bracelets, I hook two simple circles of silver and then tie them on my wrist, holding my arm up to the sky. The bracelets slip down my arm, but the blood is dry and beginning to flake, so it doesn’t smear like I thought.

Once the sky is a mottled bruise and my playlist has gone quiet, throat pleasantly raw, I start the climb down, wishing I had some more of that soda from earlier. The streets at night are best to skateboard on. It’s like no one can see me, zooming through green lights and hopping over curbs. The new kid’s house is dark except for one light toward the rear, a bedroom, maybe his. I watch the street for any potholes and continue on home.

My mom is asleep and I tiptoe down the hall to the bathroom to shower and wash the blood from my skin. The twine around my neck and wrist soaks to a dark brown, molten chocolate, the silver twinkling. The scrape on my elbow isn’t that bad, even if the water aggravates the stinging again. Already it’s begun to clot and I’ll have a considerable scab to pick at in the coming weeks. My palms are red and angry, skin torn and hanging by shreds in some places. I peel it off and try not to gag, hoping the ointment I smear on it will be enough.

My bedroom is cast in shadows, and I walk naked to my bed. I like letting the overhead fan dry my body. I stretch my arms up to the ceiling and feel the air glide over my fingertips, shoulders, back and waist, down to my buttocks and all along my legs. I yawn and bring my arms back down, ready to collapse into bed. But outside my window along the street, a shadow hurls by and I pause, peeking through the blinds.

But there’s nothing there, there’s no one.

**Chris:**

I run to exhaust myself. It works only sometimes. Just like I lift weights. Just like I read. Either I’ll get home and shower and fall asleep dead until the next afternoon, or I’ll get a bad case of the shakes and moan into my pillow because not sleeping physically hurts. For the most part, I’m healthy. I eat well – not to mention the time between ages thirteen through sixteen when I shot up thirteen inches and ate everything in sight. Working out keeps my body strong, but my mind is the only sore point in this otherwise perfectly functioning machine. It’s beginning to seep into the colors of my dreams, drab grays and flimsy yellows and spots of white that make me squint and rob me of rest.

The grating sound appeared again a while ago. I was at my computer, blinking blearily at the screen as I selected whether I prefer shopping for home electronics at Target or Walmart. I’d jumped up and hurried to the window to peek out but there was nothing there. The street was too dark and I realized too late that I should have shut my light off, would have seen more. Seen him. Where had he gone?

Roused now, I stick my feet into my tennis shoes and throw on another shirt. My dad and I had had a simple, slightly awkward dinner. We were both getting used to each other again, me to his graying hair and new nervous thumb tick and him to my inked arm and bigger size in general. He’d been visibly alarmed when he saw me the first time at the bus depot. I’d crossed those last four inches over six feet this last winter, my bulk no doubt the cause of his small step back.

“Chris…wow. You’re so different.”

Yeah, I’d thought. I’m not twelve anymore.

Dwarfing him helped appease my general anger at him by only a little, feeling justified in wondering all these years why he hadn’t made more of an effort to get me back. Leaving with my mom just at the cusp of very sudden and confusing experiences only aggravated me that much more. I love my mom, completely, but she wasn’t who I needed.

Still, I tried not to let my general resentment spoil what might be something good for the both of us. I sensed in him a willingness to accept me, despite what my mom might have told him about what happened, and I had to appreciate that. Dinner was nice. We had the game on in the background so it wasn’t only clanking cutlery and mutely distressed throat clearings. We spoke a bit, catching up. He asked me about sports (I said I like watching baseball but was more into running), and I asked him about work (heading toward retirement at the quarry, nearly at his pension). I washed the dishes and he fixed his lunch for the next day. Neat and quiet.

It was still early and I imagined I would be up all night and part of the morning if I didn’t try to nip this in the bud. I was going on thirty-hours now and beginning to get desperate.

Jogging down the dark streets of our neighborhood, I thought of my dad. I know my mom told him about my insomnia with the fancy name of Circadian rhythm sleep disorder, aka delayed sleep phase disorder. At least, that's what I diagnosed myself with during one of my many hours traipsing websites trying not to become a hypochondriac on top of everything else. I seem unable to fall asleep like other average people, going under at night, waking in the morning. I need to climb a mountain through a hailstorm slash tornado slash tsunami slash blizzard to put up my stupid flag of accomplishment, or some shit like that. It's stupid and terrible and I'm pretty sick of it. With every passing hour I can feel the tremble in my heart as my anxiety spikes and I break out in a cold sweat.

He hasn’t mentioned my sleeping habits since I came back to live with him. He makes us some dinner after getting home from the quarry and then watches a game on the TV until ten or so, and then he showers and says a quiet goodnight and goes to sleep.

Easy. Like nothing.

Whereas I battle the buzzing in my head and my jittery leg and wish my brain would just shut off like a light switch. Before I know it it’s the next day and I’m meeting my next sleepless mile mark.

No one's going to want to hire me with my resting hours so unpredictable. I'll have to stick to jobs I can get online. They pay decent, surprisingly, and I've developed a bit of a rep among creators for those websites. I feel fairly confident they'll continue to pay me for my input on their products. It’s not the most stimulating work, but I’m a beggar.

The doctor my mom took me to prescribed medication to help me sleep, pills that come with euphemistical names that hide the truly horrendous science behind it. Ambien (zolpidem); Lunesta (eszopiclone); Rozerem (ramelteon); Sonata (zaleplon); Silenor (doxepine); and then you have your benzodiazepines, which include Halcion (triazolam), Restoril (temazepam), and the ever famous Xanax (alprazolam) and Valium (diazepam). Just fancy names for drugs that knock you out. Most of these medications help people get to sleep and stay asleep, although some studies have shown that people will wake in the middle of the night and can’t go back under. And let’s not forget the possibility of tingling in the hands and feet, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, stomach pain, loss of balance, etc.

It’s hard to say no to.

Because of my combo pack of insomnia and anxiety, my doctor tried to put me on an antidepressant, which supposedly works well to combat and improve both conditions. I took it only three times. It coated the edges of my vision and tongue with fuzzy little vibrating glass fibers, and made my stomach hurt. Not to mention how low it brought me. I was interested in nothing, catching myself staring at the wall for close to an hour before I realized. Things began to melt together, colors, the sky and horizon, the sofa to the floor.

Sure, I slept. But it was too deep, too dark like an underground cavern, and my dreams were of slimy things that wanted to gut me open and eat me.

I haven't taken it again, but no one knows. I’d rather battle the fatigue and hear myself laugh at a TV show than feel that ugly void again. It was like being dead, and rising from it was terrifying and just as painful as not sleeping at all.

For now, I'll take the rest of the summer before classes in the fall and maybe find work, but also absolutely attempt to get my insomnia under control on my own.

**Tom:**

The house on the corner is always so still. At night there’s a dark blue pickup in the driveway, but it’s always gone by the time I wake up in the morning. School’s been out for a week and I’ve already passed two of my new video games and read the new James Rollins. The twine around my wrist and neck feels natural on my skin, like grass, and I roll them between my fingers and almost taste the inner wheat of them.

Is the boy a hermit?

Changing into some jeans and a soft green T-shirt, I skip down the hall to the kitchen. My mom is at the stove.

“Want some breakfast?” She turns to me and I nod, squeezing her elbow in thanks. I serve us orange juice and set utensils and napkins on the table. I turn on the TV, hoping the background noise will help me focus.

“Mom?” I say quietly as she brings our plates to the table. My heart is flipping happily that I didn’t weld the ‘m’ into one long hum, but I take a deep breath and go on. “D-do you…th-think I can buy the new Kh-hhhaaal—.” I break off and stare at my feet, gritting my jaw. ‘H’ sounds are particularly nasty to me, especially if followed by a vowel, no matter any silent letters, like ‘K’ in this instance. She puts her fork down and narrows her gaze, two splotches of red on her cheeks. I hurry to finished, forcing out the words. They sound stilted. “ _Khhaaled_. Khaled. Hosseini. His b-book came out t-today.” I gasp down at my food, chest tight with fury. Sometimes I wonder if living at the top of a mountain would be easier. Or buried under the sea.

She sighs and starts picking at her eggs. “Sure. How much do you need? A twenty?”

“Yes,” I whisper, before adding easily, “Please.” I wish my tongue wouldn’t fight me more often.

“It’s in my purse. Go on and get it.” I jump up and head to the table by the front door where she keeps her bag. Inside the front pocket next to a travel-sized bottle of aspirin and a tube of lipstick is a crisp bill. I stuff it into my jeans and snap her bag closed.

“Aren’t they usually cheaper the day they come out?”

I look up at her, surprise lifting my brows. She shrugs. “A man at work mentioned it. Sometimes up to forty percent.”

Smiling, I nod. “Th-that’s why I like to snatch them up beee-fore th-they go full price.” She hums around a mouthful and we’re quiet the rest of the meal.

After breakfast, I wash the dishes and walk out the door with her.

“Be careful on the streets, Tom. I worry about you on that piece of wood.”

I smile and glance down at my board. It has a simple deck with four yellow wheels and _DEATHWISH_ stamped on its underbelly. I try not to take it as some kind of omen. But I got it at a garage sale for two bucks almost a year ago, and I’m really attached to it.

“I’ll be okay,” I say smoothly. Easy, like nothing. After she leaves, I hop on my board and head to the Target on Campbell. My music is low in my ears, just in case a driver gets careless and almost kills me, and I sing as I roll along, the words vibrating in my throat like the buzz of bees. It means I’m making noise, I’m real and I can be heard.

It’s like swallowing gold and watching your veins light up with the sun, I think, smiling up at the sky.

**Chris:**

I wake up on the floor of my room, neck stiff, arm twisted under me. Needle bites race up to my elbow and I sit up with a groan, rubbing them away. The clock on my desk reads 8:07am. I only slept for two hours. I slump back against the bedframe.

“Fuck.”

A shower helps to further wake me, but I’m groggy and a little unsteady on my feet. Dad’s gone by now and the house echoes with empty spaces. There’s a letter in the mail from my mom on the kitchen counter, and I open it to find four checks from the online survey companies I work for. Good thing too, because I wanted to buy some things for school in the fall. My course load is light, mostly intro level stuff, but I have two afternoon classes on Mondays and Wednesdays and two night classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays I have off, and I’m hoping to find a job on campus to help me out with what I earn taking surveys.

Conditional upon my transfer to this university is I have to meet with a counselor twice a week. The name read Abrams in my welcome packet, but it could be a man or a woman. Abrams would have been informed of my recent history with insomnia, no doubt having read about the incident just before my mom sent me away.

Frank isn’t pressing charges, but he did make it clear he was uncomfortable with me around. I honestly don’t remember what happened. But words like _altercation_ and _broken ulna_ and _rage-induced_ and _mental exhaustion_ and _unstable_ have been flung around me the last few weeks, so I get the picture. Even though Frank and I never really got on, we were always civil to each other, respectful of our spaces, both highly aware of my increasing size and strength in comparison to his middle-age encroaching roundness. 

I’m not looking forward to meeting with Abrams, but I’ll give a try. Anything to help erase the look of hurt betrayal on my mother’s face that night I woke up on the floor to her screams – _who are you?! Get out!_ —and Frank’s mottled neck veins pulsing in pain.

I find an old bike in my dad’s garage and pump some air into the front tire. It squeaks as I pedal down the street, but I’d googled for the closest store and discovered it was a Target. The air is humid and salty, but strangely cool under the canopied trees along the street, and I angle my face up at the bits of sunlight I can see through the leaves.

The bike rack is located just to the side of the entrance, so I chain up the front tire and head inside. The air conditioning blasts me in the face and I almost moan out loud, it feels so good. Going on very little sleep my senses sometimes scream with acuteness or drag along for the ride, useless. But today I’m feeling particularly sensitive.

A group of girls eyes me from the Starbucks tucked into the corner, giant cups of swirly coffee in their long-fingered grips, nails the color of flowers. I’ve been getting that a lot this last year. They like my tats or my hair or my height or my muscles or everything at once, and think that winks or strawberry-glossed smiles are going to reel me in. And I don’t mind that stuff, but not from them.

I’m turning away when I spot a head of curly blond hair hurrying behind a display of potato chips and salsa dip. My pulse trips up and I follow after him, bypassing the girls and ignoring their shy hellos. He moves through the home and garden and toy departments, and finally slows when he reaches the entertainment section. The school supplies are around here somewhere, so I would have headed here too. Regardless.

He eyes the new movie releases, checking the prices before putting one of them back and moving on to the aisles of books. Searching the selections, he comes back to the front display, hesitating and retracing his steps one more time, clearly not finding something. I pick up a notebook at random, some pencils, a calculator, not really paying attention to what I’m grabbing because it’s hard to keep my eyes off him.

Maybe a year or two younger than me, the boy I’d seen the other day on his skateboard is probably one of the prettiest boys ever, anywhere. Tall and gangly, he’s mostly all legs. He has a long scrape on his right elbow, scabbed dark and bruised purple. Growing wildly, adorably, his hair is a mop of perfectly coiled curls of gold, bouncing as he walks and looks for his book. Not to mention that neck, so long and pale.

I swallow and look down at my arms, laden with things I don’t even need. I dump everything back on the shelf and turn to see the boy slowly approaching an employee in brown khakis and a red shirt, busy with unloading a box of children’s books. She’s smiling and laughing with another girl in the next aisle over. The boy with the golden hair stops just behind her, his skateboard crammed under a long arm, the other lifted as if to tap the girl on the shoulder, his finger long and delicate. Even though he’s thin as a reed, his hands are big, as if his body still needs some growing to do. My mouth dries out.

But the girl’s radio squawks and she unclips it from her belt, speaking into it before hurrying away. Mouth parted, finger held up helplessly, the boy just watches her leave and then visibly sags before turning back to the bookshelves, disappointment etched into his lovely face.

Why didn’t he just ask her? What stopped him? But as I pick up a couple of the right notebooks I need and a bag of pens and pencils, shooting glancing at him every few seconds, I feel my heart dip when I turn back and find him already looking at me. His brows are low, expression guarded, but I can tell he’s been watching for a while. Eyes flitting down to my tattooed arm, snagging on my hair and the necklaces around my neck, I try my damnedest to memorize how his cheeks turn a pretty pink as I relax my face and smile at him. I hope the bruises under my eyes aren’t too ugly.

A foot drags back, and then the other before he’s fleeing up the aisle. He disappears around the corner and I’m left alone. I sigh and grab the rest of my supplies and then head to the front of the story to pay, glad that the girls at the coffee shop are gone too.

**Tom:**

The wall of mirrors reflects my startled face back at me as I race to the next aisle. Only lamps and canvas frames of the Eiffel Tower and Marilyn Monroe here, so I lean against the support beam and exhale up at the lights.

It had to be him.

That giant arm with its twists of colors, skulls and roses and other things I couldn’t make out. That long hair, done up in a messy bun. The thin chains of silver and corded cloth around his neck. His tired eyes, downturned at the corners and a little sad even as he smiled. At me.

I didn’t expect him to be so gorgeous. Like drop dead. Bombshell. Super model. Is he like seven feet tall? His smile, though. It was slow and sexy with just a peek of teeth, deep in his cheeks. My blood almost boiled but also froze?

He has a dark widow’s peak.

Jesus. Okay.

I peek around the corner but the aisle with the school supplies is empty. Regretting my hasty retreat, I take my board and before I lose my nerve, I approach another employee, this time an older man with a beer gut.

“E-excuse me. But c-can you h-h-help me with something?”

“Of course. What can I help you find?”

I’m prepared. I show him my phone screen, where Khaled Hosseini’s new book is displayed. “D-Do you have a-a-any…anymore?”

He peers at the screen and then over to the book section, and I immediately like him. No sneers at my stumbling, no judgmental narrowed eyes, no double takes.

“I thought I saw some this morning. They’re out already?”

I nod.

“Okay. Let me go check the back.” He tells me to stay put and then pushes through a set of double doors marked ‘Employees Only’.

I shift my weight from foot to foot, hoping they have more copies, wishing I’d returned the boy’s smile. When the man appears again, he has six copies of the book in his arms, and my face splits in half. I reach for one.

“Thank you!”

“These are it! The only ones left. Must be popular. I’ll put ‘em on the display. Happy reading!”

I wave. “H-h-happy reading!” And then fire floods my face because I’m stupid. He’s not going to _read_. Before he realizes I’m a loser and stops being nice to me, I turn on my heel and head to the front cash registers, the book feeling like promising gold in my hands.

I spend the next two days holed up in my room reading Hosseini’s new novel. I’ve probably cried several gallons of tears, my heart torn asunder from the devastation he wreaks on his characters. By the end of it I’m feeling unusually low and bereft of the sun. It’s nearly sunset so I grab my board and cram my earphones into my ears.

“I look in the mirror,” I sing, wiping the last tears from my eyes. “And I try to see myself, my head full of terror, from the games I played so well. I try to see clearer, I try to forget the fires I started. I try to be nearer…to where you are—.”

Eyes on the ground, I push and I push, my board rattling on the pavement, taking me to my secret place known by heart. Traffic is light and I glance minimally around me, my heart so sore over the end of the book. I can feel my sadness like roots growing in my chest, spreading through my ribcage, curling around my clavicles and tugging.

Hitting a bump on the gutted road out here by the tracks, I stumble and gain my feet before I end up face planting again. Snatching my board up, I run through the trees and hear the birds cutting like missiles through the leaves above, chirping, hopefully, along with my song.

Board buried, I start my climb and sing my way closer to the sky. The sun is sinking faster than I’d hoped and by the time I reach my favorite branch, it’s only a simmering ribbon along the horizon, most of the sea like dark ink. Curling my legs to the side, I fiddle with some new twine, wanting another necklace, when I hear the unmistakable sound of boys.

Crashing through the brush, there are four of them, all boys from my school, from my grade, boys who _know_.

“Hey, T-T-T-T-Tom!” Ryan Andrews yells up at me, mimicking my stutter. The other three snicker and I blush hot. Swallowing around the saliva flooding my mouth, I sit up, both arms hugging the trunk of the tree.

“What? Got nothing to say? Come down here!”

I shake my head. _No_.

“I won’t bite. They won’t either, right, guys?” More head shakes, big wolf grins. “Saw you on your board. Thought we’d say hi to you. It’s been a long time since we seen each other at school.”

Images of the last time I saw Ryan Andrews flash in my mind, and my eyes snap closed. A punch, a cruel hair yank, stuffed into a locker. Laughter echoing down the hall. My hoarse cries, stuttering terribly, fear racketing up my spine until the girls’ volleyball team finally found and freed me hours later.

“Remember?” he says softly, his lips moving slowly. I can see his face so clearly from my perch on the tree, and it leaves chills on my skin. Of course I remember. The heat of his breath on my neck as he slammed his fist into my stomach, the hard muscle of his arm crushing me to him in all his anger, all his taunts. The way my scalp pulled painfully. And then moments later, my earphones dangling out of the locker, crushed between the door, wires slowly breaking as I struggled.

I remember.

“Want me to remind you? How much we missed you, T-T-T-Tom?” He puts his hand on the tree, fingers curling into it with promise.

“No,” I gasp, but they don’t hear. Hardly anyone hears when I speak. Soft, invisible voice. They don’t know its depth.

“Gonna make me chase you?” He’s found the pigeon hole I wedge my toes into to gain leverage, and now he’s climbing and my heart’s jack hammering. I squirm on the branch, nowhere to go but down, but that’s where he is, inching closer.

Beneath us, one of the boys bends low and unearths one of the yellow wheels of my board and my stomach turns.

“Hey, Ryan! Found his ride!”

“Break it,” Ryan grunts as he lifts himself higher, a big hand clasping a new branch, and then another. He’s not as light as I am, and so the climb is harder for him. Wobbling, I bring my legs under me and stand on my branch. Inside the bird’s cubbyhole, I can see my ball of twine and the little plastic bag of silver charms, the dark evening making them barely discernible. The surf crashes loudly just off the cliffs to the west, the trees looming dangerously tall in all that murk. Will I make it if I jump? Should I aim to squash the other boys, just in case I don’t?

Clinging to the tree, I shake my head again and stare at Ryan below. And then suddenly, there are grunts of pain from ground level. Around Ryan’s body, I can barely make out his friends sprawled on the bed of loamy leaves. Two have hands on their noses and the third is holding his leg like he’d been kicked by a horse.

“What the fuck!” Ryan calls down, twisting his neck to see. But before he can gain further purchase, the tree vibrates and then he gives a short, strangled scream – of surprise or pain, I can’t tell. We lock eyes for a second, and I’m just as shocked as he is. I squeak as he slips another inch before being dragged down the rest of the trunk, fingers scraping along the bark, shirt bunching up on his chest. I see his flat tummy and a dark trail of hair, but my eyes zoom into focus on the boy gripping Ryan’s ankle, lips snarled.

It’s him _._ _My_ him _._ The boy with the tattoos. He’s half-hanging from the bottom branch, arm reached high to yank hard on Ryan’s foot. Ryan loses his grip and falls several feet to the ground, landing with a hard thud, and then _my him_ is jumping off after. I’m immediately on the move, scrambling down the branches, eyes on the scene below. Ryan’s friends are gone, and Ryan trying desperately to follow. He’s crawling to his hands and knees, glancing at the tattooed boy, but he’s too late. Snatching him up by the scruff of his neck, the boy hauls Ryan to his feet and then heaves him into the closest tree, a gargantuan show of strength, a warning. I watch as if from underwater, the slow arc through the air, the muscles rippling along that daring ink, the rabid growl that permeates the air, my heart.

Ryan collides with a loud crack, and I gasp, jumping down another branch. But he picks himself up quickly and takes off at a sprint, tossing panicked glares over his shoulder. I think I smile.

Finally at the last branch, I hesitate for just a second, eyes on the boy’s broad-shouldered back, when my foot slips on the smooth-barked limb and I tumble to the ground.

**Chris:**

I don’t plan on following, but I can’t help myself when I see the four boys trailing him just out of sight. They have a mean look about them, eyes narrowed with cruel teasing, teeth shiny behind soft-looking lips. I remember boys like that when I was in high school, and I don’t trust them, not when they’re looking at him like he’s meant to be devoured and kicked and bleeding. Devoured, yes, in all the ways that I may have imagined last night, but not what they have in mind. At least not intentionally.

They slip into the trees a minute or two after him, and I keep a safe distance, not really remembering this part of town from when I was younger. Once a few trees in, I think I’ve lost them but their laughter reaches me from deeper still, eerie and echoing. We’re near the cliffs, the ocean battering against the rocky faces, and I shake my uneasy feeling away. There’s something about the woods that makes me nervous, something ancient and pulsing that tickles the back of my neck, but I don’t like that they’re in here with him. Hurrying now, I catch the tail end of the conversation, see that he’s climbed to the very top. That he’s clinging to the trunk as the boys taunt him, that one is starting to crawl up.

In my head, it’s like a wick catching flame, a fuse shortening, the ground dropping out from under me. I don’t feel my legs or the possible crunch of leaves and twigs under my toes, but I’m suddenly in front of the three kids at the base of the tree. I jab my fist into the first one’s nose, bringing up my elbow to repeat the blow on the second boy. Both drop like a sack of rocks and I'm whirling to face the third kid, whose looking at me like I'm a Yeti or something. Bringing my knee up, I stab my boot heel into the meat of his thigh and he gives a short scream before he too is on the ground.

"What the fuck!" the fourth boy calls down from his perch on the tree. Beyond him, round blue eyes stare down in shock.

Running the last few feet, I throw myself at the lowest branch and reach up to snag at the ankle trembling in a groove of bark. I tug hard and the boy starts a raspy slide down the tree. When he finally falls a rush of adrenaline burns through me, a giant ball of crackling light, and I jump after him with a grunt. Lifting him, flinging him against the tree, it feels like nothing but feathers. Not that the kid is that heavy or anything, but how effortless it turns out to be, fueled by this sudden rage, surprises even me as I catch my breath and stare across at him. Something shutters in my mind and my sight winks out for a second, a fuse fizzing out, and I think that I might actually, ridiculously, fall asleep here on my feet.

He's gone before I can blink, leaving me alone in the glade, my hands shaking at my sides.

My heart's beating so fast and I think I sway a little but I'm brought round when I hear a thud and a soft whimper. The boy from the top of the tree is sprawled on his stomach, a grimace tightening his lovely mouth.

"Whoa," I say, swallowing, curling my fingers into my palms. "That was...really aggressive." It comes easy to me, aggression. Some men are built like mountains but make as small a ripple as a butterfly. Not me. I storm and I rage, colors and winds knocking together in my head, sometimes so hard white light pierces my skull and I'm left whimpering on the floor, brain pounding, someone's bone broken. "Are you okay?" _Please don't be scared of me._

He says nothing. There's blood on his forearm where a rock bit into him, and the slow thick stream of it has me nervous suddenly. My foot itches to slide back. Instead, I step forward, my hand out. I keep my voice low, don't want to spook him.

“It's okay. Here."

His eyes snap to mine and then he turns as bright as a tomato. I hesitate, catching the short shuffle he takes away from me.

“Sorry. Don’t want to, you know, scare you.” I point back the way the other boys left. “Saw them follow you in. Looked like a bunch of dicks, so…” I break off and give a small laugh, hands in my back pockets as the corners of his mouth give the smallest twitch. I’m trying not to babble – I’ve been up for twenty-two – but I take it as a good sign. “I’m Chris.”

He sits up and dusts his hands off, looking content to stay on the ground. “T-Tom,” he whispers, barely.

“So you do talk.” I hope my smile isn’t manic. He shrugs. “Softly,” I add. “Can I help you up?” I reach again and this time he clasps my hand and I haul him to his feet. He’s nearly as tall as me, but I remember how thin he is from when I saw him at the store, and I know we would fit just right, him and me. “You okay?”

He nods. “Yes. Th-thank you.” Swallowing, he looks to be gunning up the courage to say something. So I wait. “They’re j-just…assholes.” He exhales the last word, as if relieved to be rid of it. Cheeks brightening, his blue eyes zap over my face like he’s hoping not to see something there.

I grin. “I could tell. Didn’t like the way they were looking at—.” I shift my gaze down and he shifts an inch closer.

“Me?” he whispers, and I meet his eyes.

“Yeah.” I’m reassured down to my core by the pretty smile he gives me.

He’s so soft-spoken, his voice like the kind of thing that might form after a hard rainfall, the mist that rises from the hot earth. Perfumes are made from such things, aren’t they?

“I just moved back,” I say, to fill the silence he seems used to. “I’m back with my dad after living with my mom for a while.” His brows bunch together, maybe a question? “Yeah, things didn’t work out too well. I got into some…trouble, and I don’t think her boyfriend liked me very much.” Not after what I supposedly did, that’s for sure.

Bending to pick up his board, still intact despite that last kid’s bitten warning, he makes a small humming noise that I take to mean he understands. He clears his throat and takes a deep breath. “You...are g-going t-to…the high school?” He exhales quickly and turns away.

We fall into a slow stride. “No. I’m starting at Smith in the fall. I’ll be nineteen in August.” I don’t know why I add that, but I like the soft “oh” he makes, like I might be the coolest person he knows. “How old are you?”

“I’ll be eight-t-teen in February.”

So he stutters, and suddenly I get it. That's why they were after him, why he’s such an easy target. Slight and prone to downcast eyes, and so, so quiet. I keep my eyes on the trees, the sudden urge to wrap an arm around him nearly stifling me to death. “Those assholes go to school with you?”

He nods, and winces just a tiny bit.

“They mess with you a lot?”

Another half-shrug.

My mind races. He’s said only a dozen words, but I’m already greedy for more. “You live around here?”

“Same street as you.” This comes out so fast, it’s obviously a knee-jerk response. His eyes widen and then he’s hurrying ahead, nearly at the edge of the woods. I can see the train tracks from here.

“Wait! Wait, hey. It’s okay. I noticed you too.”

Pausing, he throws me another questioning frown and I nod quickly. “Yeah. Out my living room window. I saw you ride past. On that thing.” I point to the board he has clutched in both hands. He looks down at it and then a small laughs escapes him. I give a quiet laugh too, my chest tightening like a bow. “Sorry. Was that creepy?”

“Mm. No.” He wipes his mouth and peeks at me under the furl of his lashes, a side-glance. “I nooot-t-iced you t-too.”

“Really?” I don’t mean for my voice to sound so eager, but I’m half-turned to him anyway. “When?”

Jumping up on the tracks, he balances precariously on the rusted strip of iron, arms out to the side. “At the—.” He hesitates, still turned away from me. The back of his neck blooms red. “Sssstore,” he whispers finally.

“I was wondering what you were looking for.”

He teeters and I grab his elbow – scraped to hell and scabbed over with a bruise that has no business on his skin. He spins so fast at my touch that we both trip a little and end up on opposite sides of the tracks.

“Sorry,” I say, throwing up my hands. His gaze flits to my tattoos and I suddenly don’t mind his attention on them. But then his eyes slide low to the ground and he kicks at a bottle cap. When he speaks, it’s slowly, with great care and measure.

“I was…looking…for a b-book. That had c-come out. That day.”

“Did you get it?”

“Yes. A man helped me. Had them in the back.”

He’s back on the iron track and I jump on opposite him, our arms like airplane wings. “You like to read?”

He hums and stays quiet.

“I don’t,” I hurry to say. “Not usually. Well, not recreationally. I have to be with school. The plan is engineering, but first couple of years is gen-ed crap. Loads of boring stuff.” I pinch my mouth shut and peek at him. He’s staring at me. I jerk to a halt on the iron strip, and take a step toward him. “What?”

Stumbling back, he keeps the same distance, breath hitching.

“I won’t hurt you. It’s okay.”

His board clutched to his belly, I can see his arms are so thin in his green and white striped tank, his skin burned golden brown. But under his biceps, a small peek of ribs, ivory white. My throat catches imagining the rest of him, how pale he must be, how soft. He’s as skittish as a kitten, or he’s heard something about me. Or both.

“Have you heard something about me?” I blurt out, that seed of upset starting to flower. “Is that why you’re scared of me?”

When his eyes snap up, surprise – and anger – narrow them. “I’m n-n-n- _not…_ scared of you!”

“But you’ve heard something?” I didn’t mean to do it. I wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all him.

He shakes his head fast. “No,” he gasps. “I—.” But his mouth stays parted, like his tongue’s turned to lead between his teeth, his eyes pinching with panic and disappointment. Making a short huff in frustration, he darts past me to the start of the paved road. Dropping his board he jumps on, his long leg lifting and falling to kick at the ground, gaining speed.

I watch him leave, watch as he veers around the corner. But he looks back at me at the last second, and I feel a jab to my gut as he lifts his hand almost demurely and tosses a quick wave. I’m too frozen to wave back. He disappears around the stop sign and I’m left alone on the tracks.

**Tom:**

My stomach hurts. God, I’m such a loser. Can’t even say a fucking sentence. Chris— _Chris_ , oh that’s his name!—heard me stutter and now probably never wants to see me again. He thinks people have been gabbing about him behind his back. And maybe they are, but I don’t know about any of that! I only know he was gone before I can really remember him, and now he’s back, and he’s really, really gorgeous.

And he saved me. He said he didn’t like how those jerks from school were looking at me. And at the store, he smiled. But how can he ever like me having witnessed my spectacular speech impediment? Flopping down on the edge of my bed, I hesitate, a well-bitten thumbnail between my teeth. That’s a shitty thing to think. Maybe that’s not giving him enough credit. We hardly know each other.

How I wish we did. The story behind his giant tattoo, how he decided on engineering, why he looks so tired.

Eyes rimmed with violet, tender bruises just beneath, he seemed on the verge of collapse, but he’d still found the strength to lift a boy and throw him?

I fall back on the bed, the glow in the dark stickers of all nine planets and their surrounding stars swirling behind my overhead fan. I remember being eight years old and standing on one of the dining room chairs, tongue out as I stuck each one on, awestruck at their flaming arcs in the dark, wondering what it would feel like to burn so bright.

Something starts to itch just behind my chest, something dry and pockmarked with angry sores. I scratch gently, my thumb grazing my nipple and making my hips twitch.

I am impatient.

It is a rare emotion. Unfelt since my toddler years when a toy rolled away or a favorite cartoon ended. A memory slides into view, of a TV commercial and an outdoor water sprayer flinging arcs of the diamond-like liquid over happily squealing children running through bright green grass, and just outside our window our small backyard with its dirt and rocks and my sudden wailing.

In all my silence I move slowly, react slowly, thinking miles ahead of the next person. I wait my turn and don’t speak up, sometimes don’t speak at all. I am content to play my role as a background ornament in family gatherings or at school, a specter in the hallways, blending in, a mirage.

But this boy, he is a live wire. A spark. A flaming wisp. A recognition. Being seen by him was like swallowing the moon, silver light beating through my blood vessels, blinking out through my freckles, catching like glitter on my lashes. He was not like others I’d seen. Boys who pretended a whole lot and only seemed to disappoint. I could see it in the way their lips turned up at the corners, smirks that hid half-truths and future betrayal. Lots of these boys would follow in their old man’s footsteps, jobs at the quarry, or up north at the potato farm, filling girls with babies and lies that stick, lies that will work for them for years and years, trapping people who love them under their scrawny wings. Disappointing, just like their fathers. I had one myself.

Boys pretending, that’s all.

It’s why I avoid them, no matter my immense attraction to some of them. Their shoulders and their necks, their big hands and their calf muscles. Their soft hair and veined hipbones. These are things I only allow myself to glimpse in short fragments, because seeing them all together is to see the boy completely and that would mean possibly falling for him, and that would mean—

It would just mean.

But Chris— _Chris_ —seems to have already crossed that threshold so many of the boys around here wish they could. Except for a bit of baby fat lingering at his cheeks, he was solid and true and absorbed into a physical maturity that might continue to elude me for years. Just as I could tell the inherent nature in others to deceive, the soft give around Chris’s mouth, his shy smile and tired eyes hinted at the older soul in him, between the cusp of gentle and wild, bodily tossing a boy away like the garbage he is, reaching out to steady me.

I sit straight up in bed, my heart pounding, my need to see him again rising like a wave to smother me if I don’t move. I grab my board and fling my window open. I kick up and down the street, my eyes on the rear bedroom window of the house on the corner, looking for a flicker in the curtains, a shadow, something.

**Chris:**

I try to comfort myself with the old adage that only the truly brilliant never sleep, but as I clock in thirty hours without rest, I’m beginning to invest in the possibility that I might be truly insane. I can’t claim any kind of greatness as the specks of uneven paint on the wall catch my fraying attention. My addled brain finds them fascinating, uncomplicated, just blips in this huge universe that bother no one and nothing. I stare at them for god knows how long before I finally collapse sideways on my bed, so deep into the dank well of sleep that I don’t move until almost thirteen hours have trickled by and I wake with an aching waist. That grating noise, rattling and pocked with small bubbles of silence when the yellow wheels dip into grooves in the pavement, rouses me just momentarily somewhere in the middle of my little siesta. Lashes flickering up, fingers twitching, I moan and move my head an inch, cement packed inside my skull, heavy grains that sift and pile unevenly, pressure on my brain, just sleep, go back to sleep.

But he’s out there, I think before sleep yanks me under again and I’m lost to my dreams of thunder horses and rolling clouds. When I wake, it’s late evening, dark enough to be either midnight or just south of dinner time. My dad’s left me a plate of spaghetti on my desk. A roll of bread with butter already smeared inside and a glass of water sit beside it. I devour it all, fork clinking on the plate, guzzling down the water and swallowing the bread in three quick bites. There’s a buzz under my skin, my hair feels on fire, and my eyes are wider than I’ve felt them in days. Jumping up, I lace up my trainers and throw on a sweatshirt and some basketball shorts.

The glow under my dad’s bedroom door means he’s probably asleep with the TV on. I slip away down the hall. The garage is unlocked, and I let myself in. The light flickers on with a droning hum and I squint into the cluttered mess. A canoe stands in the corner like a leaning drunkard, and shelves of fishing and camping gear line the far wall. A queasy feeling worms into my stomach, upset suddenly by all the time I missed spending with my dad, all the things he couldn’t show me and wished he had. How might my insomnia been different if I’d stayed living with him? Would it be as bad? Would I even have it?

Around the oiled parts of a spare engine on top of a creaking, cracked ping pong table I see a weight set and I make a beeline for it. Under the layer of greasy dust specks that I wipe off with a crumpled rag the bench is in good, sturdy condition. 

Measuring the weights and adjusting the set to my height, I work out steadily for an hour, mostly bench pressing until I can feel the pulse in my fingers. And after, muscles throbbing, feeling stretched and stronger, I push out the side door and take to the street, my legs weightless, lifting high as I run past houses quiet and glittering with soft porch lights. I’m not thinking. I’m only breathing, counting my steps, keeping my torso straight, palms open. The moon is bright behind me, casting my shadow ahead like a jilted doppelgänger. Blood pumping, heat building, sweat dripping off me, I’m not nearly as aware as I should be, and it isn’t until a hand is gripped around my elbow that I startle and spin around. Standing before me, the moon throwing his shadow over mine on the pavement, so that for one cruel moment I can imagine our shadows are kissing, is Tom.

I yank my headphones off.

“Hey,” I rasp, lifting the hem of my shirt and wiping my face. His eyes dart down to my navel, and I slow my hand, letting the shirt slip higher as I rub at the back of my neck. He gulps and turns away, and I smile.

“I-I…c-called for you,” he says softly. “B-back there. Saw you from my window.”

“I didn’t hear you, sorry.” His eyes are crinkled at the corners, tense. I want to step closer. “Are you okay?”

“I stutter.” He snaps his gaze back to me, an intensity making his eyes eerily bright. “Since I was small.”

“I know,” I say, matching the low timber of his voice. I want to take care not to spook him, and standing in the middle of the street with growing shadows and a bulbous moon seem to be working against me. He’s picking at a nail, his gaze down, starting a slow slide away. My hands clench and unclench. 

“You h-h-heard me?”

I shrug and step toward the curb, crouching to sit at its edge. As I’d hoped, he follows me. Sitting side by side, I catch a whiff of his soap or shampoo, buttery and sweet, like coconut milk. I whip my head forward and clench both hands between my knees, hoping I don’t stink.

“Wanna tell me about it?”

His elbow brushes mine and I almost burst from my skin.

“You wo-wo-wo—.” He cuts off and rams the heels of his palms into his eyes, teeth flashing as he grimaces. I shift closer and try to peer into his face. When he looks up, the skin around his eyes is red and he looks determined, biting the words out. “You. Won’t. _Hit_. Me?” Each is a bullet, forced out and nipped cleanly, but he is so desperate to speak and I’m so desperate to hear him. Still, his question freezes me and I can only stare for a long moment.

Because it’s in my blood, isn’t it? Can he sense it? Or is this only a hurt past history of his, with other boys?

“No,” I finally whisper. “Tom, I would never do that to you.”

Relief flutters his eyes closed, like maybe he’d hoped for this, and sags a little, our knees bumping. I remind myself to kick that last kid from the woods right in the balls for whatever he’s done to this beautiful boy.

Licking his lips, he inhales slowly and began. He was about five or six when he started noticing people cringe from his words, talk over him, correct him mid-sentence, blurt out suggestions to what they thought he was trying to say. It was rude and insensitive and he felt he had no way to defend himself without a voice or resorting to violence. It only got worse as he grew older, his self-esteem taking a hit as his schoolmates pinpointed him to taunt cruelly, his naturally submissive and docile nature making him an easy target. Cast out, a loner, he took up skateboarding and hanging out in the trees, making jewelry he would wear and then burying it in the rocky soil by the cliff’s edge.

“I’m alive somewhere,” he breathed, both of us sitting so close now our hips and thighs were pressed snuggly. “Somewhere a part of me is buried in the earth and maybe I’m growing there, vines of me pushing through the rock to spill freely into the sea.”

Very gently, I knock my forehead against his shoulder, and he giggles shyly. “You didn’t stutter there,” I say, and he shrugs.

“I don’t sometimes. I c-can’t control it.”

“But it gets better if you’re relaxed, or comfortable?”

“I think so, yeah.”

I have the sudden image of him on his back, mouth parted, eyes rolling back, lashes trembling, and it’s so alarmingly real that I give a little jolt, my chest squeezing painfully.

“Show me,” I manage, trying to level my breathing. “The place you bury your jewelry. The place you make it. Where you feel safe.”

His brows bunch together, there’s an excited gleam in his eyes, his back straightening eagerly. “R-rrright now?”

“Yeah.”

It’s late. At least an hour had passed since his hand snatched at me in the dark, and it feels like a daring secret between us, meeting like this, him and I, clandestine and surging.

“Let me shower. I probably stink.” He shakes his head, mouth forming a quiet _no_ as he blushes. “Meet me outside my house, twenty minutes?”

He bites his lip, a hand straying to his chest, long fingers spread wide to feel his heart maybe. “Okay,” he finally gushes, smile so wide his eyes almost close.

“God, you’re pretty,” I whisper, leaning in and kissing his cheek just before I jump up and walk away backwards. He gasps and palms his face, curls fluffing in the passing breeze. “Meet me?” I repeat, and this time his nod is immediate, sitting small on the curb, legs folded up against his chest. I turn away before I can’t, and run back to my house.

**Tom:**

Trying not to knock anything over, I climb back in through my window and clap a hand over my mouth to catch the giddy laugh waiting on my tongue. There is a small circle of fire on my cheek, the spot Chris kissed tingling with blue flame and stardust. My heart hasn’t stopped racing in my chest, a steady gallop, a herd of horses that threatens to knock me off my feet. Hands shaking, I check my phone and see it’s close to midnight, the moon a lantern hanging high in the sky. I slip into a light cotton sweater and change my shoes before rubbing deodorant on. I snatch my flashlight from my closet and check my face in the mirror. I look scared, but happy, amazed that the two emotions might coincide so closely. Stuffing my earphones into my pocket, I slide my phone into the other and then jump back out the window, flashlight in hand. I keep it off as I walk down the street to Chris’s house, the moon offering enough illumination.

There’s a light in his bedroom, but it’s softer, like from a reading lamp. I can see his shadow moving around in there, and I can’t help my grin. He looks a little frantic, jumping left and right. Maybe he’s nervous, and the thought sends my heart reeling again. I lean against the stop sign post and wait another minute before his light goes out and the window is pushed open. He looks too big and too long to be scrunched together for the second it takes him to crawl out, but once his boots hit the spongy ground he stretches to his full height and my mouth waters.

Spotting me, he jogs over and I smell the soap on him, crisp and clean, his hair wet and slicked back into a tight bun. Wearing dark jeans and a light blue shirt under a black cotton jacket, he looks as ready to jump on a Harley as he does to fold me against a tree and swamp me with kisses.

“Ready?”

I nod and start walking. “Th-this way.”

He falls into stride beside me, and the night doesn’t seem as threatening as it would have had I been alone. Our footsteps are loud on the sidewalk, glass cracking and rocks crunching, and a dog starts barking from the house to our immediate right. I jump and stagger sideways into Chris, who chuckles and steadies me with two big hands on my shoulders. Squatting, he whistles low and the dog pushes its snout through a gap in the fence, whining softly as Chris pets its nose.

“Are you the dog whisperer?” I ask, immensely pleased I didn’t stumble that line, because his grin is easily the loveliest I’ve ever seen.

“He’s just doing his job. Aren’t ya boy?” The dog whines again and I roll my eyes.

“Some g-guard dog,” I mutter and continue on. Chris catches up and throws an arm over my shoulder, my traitorous face flooding with heat.

“So where are we going?” But his steps falter as we crest the hill and see the tracks below, dark ore veins.

“Into the truh-truh-trees.”

“There isn’t a way around to the cliffs?”

My smile is slow as I turn to him, his hand sliding over my shoulder and settling at the back of my neck. I like its weight there, big palm cupping, hot against the chill I feel rising from the ground.

“Are you nnn-nervous?”

He’s turned toward the dark outline of trees, but his fingers tighten on my neck. “No,” he says, shrugging. “Just—no. No. I’m good.” Another shrug, totally not nervous, no. I can’t help my smile.

I slink my arm around his waist under his jacket, and like the little jump he gives as he pulls me closer on reflex. “Come on then.” We start the slow descent to the tracks, hopping over first one, then the other. I like being this close to him; he’s so warm and the night has turned steadily cooler. The smell of salt grows sharper as we step past the first dozen trees. Chris glances left and right, up and down, snapping his head back as something rustles in the leaves above us.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, maneuvering us around giant trunks that stand like dark sentinels.

“I didn’t realize you came here just for shits,” Chris says softly. “I thought it was random, what happened the other day. When they followed you in.”

“No,” I murmur. “This is where I c-come.” I pause, embarrassed at the double entendre, but Chris gives my shoulders a sweet squeeze and I gather my breath. “To be alone. I mmm-make my jewelry up there.”

We stop before the tree I’ve marked with the blue button and I point to the very top. Chris’s mouth falls open.

“You climb this? Frequently?”

I laugh and his head whips down to catch my smile, and they’re suddenly in my ear, from earlier, his words.

_God, you’re so pretty._

“A-a-almost every d-day,” I breathe. “Do you want to see where I sit?”

“I’d rather you were safe on the ground.”

I laugh again and he steps closer, his chest bumping mine. The tingling begins in my fingers and I’m suddenly restless, my excitement mounting until the trees begin to twirl.

“Catch me,” I whisper, and then spin on my heel. I’m through a half dozen trees before I hear him curse and start to give chase, his heavy footfalls propelling me through the woods, faster, faster. I’m ducking around tree trunks and hurdling roots, my laughter bubbling from me, echoing through the dark. I catch glimpses over my shoulder, his face like a pale star, eyes intent and homed in on me. My groin tightens and I give a little squeal. Somewhere behind me, he’s grunting and nicking bark splinters, closing distance even as he pants and laughs with me, dark and deep. Any other person would think these woods were haunted after hearing our cackling screams, and maybe that’s for the better. To have this place be only our own, I’d like that.

The roaring surf rises out of the gloom as I zigzag and feel his breaths trace my neck. A hard grip on my elbow and I’m suddenly flung around, tripping on a root as his mouth crashes into mine. Our bodies collide and we’re falling backwards. He has just enough time to throw a hand beneath my head to cushion it before we’re heaped into a tangled bundle, moaning into our first kiss. Pressed hard, molten spark, we pull back and gasp ragged at each other, eyes flitting everywhere, scalp tingling. And then he’s grabbing at me and I’m lifting my chin and the kiss is like a gunshot in the dark, deafening and bright, a recoil that snaps bones and banks planets, I’m _clinging_.

It’s all lips and teeth and the sudden slip of tongue. My eyes fly open and I’m squeezing his jacket in both fists, wisps of his blond hair tickling my face as the moon lances through the branches.

We break apart, and his mouth makes its home at my neck, hot breath and nibbles, his voice rumbling sweetly, to bruise.

“ _Chris_ ,” I gasp, because his name is like honey and there is no stumbling on something so smooth. My leg lifts and he’s pressed to my core and we’re suffocating in jeans and cotton, his body the heaviest thing I’ve ever experienced, my arms wrapping around him to pull him closer. Moaning my name, he makes worship at my throat, up to my earlobe, suckling the shell as an arrow of light flings to my groin. I surprise myself by crying out. Hand in his hair, I rub my cheek on the stubble of his own, hoping for burn, hoping for truth at the end of it all, red on my skin to prove it.

He’s hard, and so am I, our hips giving little jumps, small collisions that leave sparks in my eyes, a string of diamond lights along my spine.

“Fuck,” he groans, eyes shut tight, and I peck at the corner of his lips. With a desolate shudder, he lifts himself off me and rolls to the side, dirt and twigs crackling under his weight. My wrist is wrapped tightly in his giant fist and I turn to stare at him, his face outlined by the swath of dark night sky hanging over the sea.

Beneath us the earth exhales, and our jeans are tented to the stars. I want to roll over to him, rub myself raw, but my limbs have rebelled and stay glued to the ground, only my hair shifting with the wind. I am a frozen heart needing its pulse, and he is here.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was fast. That was fast, I’m so sorry.”

“Chris,” I say again, smiling because maybe this is a word my tongue will learn to curl around without trouble. “It’s okay. We c-can…just lie here.” He meets my gaze, rolling his head so that our faces are only a foot apart, and his smile is quick and warm. His fingers slip up my hand and lace with mine, squeezing once. “I’m sorry I ran from you. The uh-uh-other day.” I exhale and tell myself to get a grip. Tell my tongue to calm the fuck down. I measure my words. “You asked me if I had h-heard anything. I haven’t. All I know is that you moved away. And now you’re back. I didn’t know how to t-tell you that before. With my—.” I sigh and point uselessly at my mouth.

It’s hardly the stuff of elevated conversation, but I’m happy not to have stumbled as much, even if I had to slow to the speed of molasses.

“It’s hard for me to gauge when I’m being talked about,” Chris says quietly. “I haven’t left the house much, but when I do it all goes hushed. I know there are rumors. But I honestly don’t know the truth myself.”

I wonder what truth he means, but I’m trying not to squirm. I can feel his pulse in my hand and if I so much as move an inch I’m going to shoot off in my pants. His eyes pierce mine.

“You’re shaking,” he says softly, and I look away at the moon.

“It’s here somewhere. Where I b-bury them. Also, I can’t feel my legs.”

His laugh is a softer echo of the cackles we gave in the woods. Deep and swollen in his chest. A rumble. "Ah, fuck," he sighs. "You're going to be my best trouble, aren't you." I smile and drop my eyes. His inhale is sharp and warms me to my core. I can feel his attraction to me like sunlight. It’s warm and just as illuminating. He jumps to his feet and takes my hands. “Come on, then. We just won’t touch each other. Think we can handle that?”

“No promises,” I say, grinning. But before we fully separate, he pulls me closer with two hands on each side of my head and kisses me again. Our crotches touch and I rise on my tiptoes, ready to pitch myself into the sky and perch on the moon. Gentler, slower, our lips mold and press into a single pretty bow, and I wrap myself onto him, squealing happily. And then we take each other’s hands and continue up the slope, a seismic shift in the air between us, the mood lighter and easier between us. Hesitant smiles grow to full on grins, softly brushed elbows turn into tight side hugs and laced fingers and _kisses._

I’m beaming, confident this isn’t happening. That my summer is as bland as ever. That I haven’t already spoken more words than I’m used to and remain unbeaten, that he hasn’t mocked me by now, ridiculed me. _Mimicked_ me. All the things people do when they think they’re being cute or funny or tough. But they’re not. They are grown adults who willingly make fun of another person because of an impediment they have no control over. I’ve had more respect from children.

And then there are those who claim they never notice when I stutter, which I personally don't believe. Because even I can hear the echo of my stammered embarrassment for a long time after, and I sincerely have trouble believing when others claim they don’t. Ignoring my problem isn’t the way to go either.

Chris, though, he knows. I’ve seen in his eyes the acknowledgment of my stutter, and it was neither cruel nor embarrassed. It was simple understanding, a patience that I’ve failed to receive from people I’ve known for years, much less a boy I've only barely met.

So I cling to the possibility that this might be a mirage of sorts, a snag in my mind, a wrinkle in my reality. That he will be gone when next I turn my head, that the warm hand on my waist is actually my own, his breaths an echo of mine, his footprints swirled to indistinguishable dust. Cruel remnants of a person I thought had existed, and that life had thought amusing to snatch away.

But he’s still with me, real and solid, when I squat by the cliff’s edge and find the loose patch of soil that holds my creations. My erection has lessened to a manageable ache, and I peek at his own to see he’s in somewhat the same state. I like that even our arousal seems to be in tune.

I dig not too far down with my hands scooped.

“You’re going to bury more?”

I nod, feeling the bite of silver against my sternum.

“What are you going to bury?”

Wiping my hands, I reach into my shirt and pull out the necklace of twine, the sun and moon and star pendants clinking together, and then start to roll the two bracelets off my wrist.

“Wait,” he says, catching my arm. “What if…Here.” He pulls out several necklaces from his own shirt, mostly thin silver chains, but he unravels one that is made from black string. Hanging from it is a lightning bolt. “Want to switch? You know...wear each other's?”

My jewelry hanging from the tips of my fingers, I consider them and then the proffered necklace Chris is holding. I meet his gaze, a giddy smile growing on my face. _Okay_ , I nod. He puts on my necklace, and I put on his, tucking it into his shirt and patting his chest. And then he takes one of the bracelets and adds it to the ones already on his wrist. I keep the second one, liking that we match.

“Thank you, Chris,” I say softly, and he clasps my hand in his.

“Thank _you,_ Tom. For this.” And by the gentle rounding of the word, I take it to mean more than just my little pieces of art.

**Chris:**

Tom doesn’t know about my erratic sleep schedule, and to my great shame, I try to keep it from him. I don’t know what it is about it that makes me feel weak and unreliable, but the last week has been so astoundingly sweet I begin to wonder if I’m not in an extended dream, lying crooked somewhere dark, asleep for days, drifting. But I’ve caught him staring at me sometimes, studying my face and the hunched angle of my shoulders. It’s so lovely, the concern written on his brow, that I almost cave. Because I’ve never felt as gentle an affection as the one Tom gives me. It endears me how open he is with his touches, liking to hold my hand or slide his arm through mine. He’s talking a little more now, even if in quiet mumbles at times, pushing his face into my shoulder, grinning because he simply can’t contain what he feels inside him.

I certainly can’t either.

I’ll have to tell him soon. We’ve exchanged numbers and text whenever we aren’t together – which isn’t often. But I know his messages drop off at a certain time of night, when he goes to sleep and I stay up because I can’t follow him into the sandy mists that so many people succumb to come dark. He thinks I’m sleeping too, but I’m online taking surveys, or running, or lifting weights, none of which makes me feel healthier. Only more tired, further dragging low my sanity and making me more disoriented the longer I go without rest. It struck me that I should start logging how often I sleep – or more accurately, the amount of time that passes between shuteye. So far this last week and a half, it’s ranged between twenty-two hours and twenty-nine.

I should stay home. I should. My head’s beginning to feel inflated with air, my skin set abuzz with scratching anxiety, my hands to shaking. But his good morning text had me stuffing my feet into shoes and hurrying to his house. I must look in bad shape when I meet Tom outside his driveway. He steps onto his board and we reach for each other’s hand at the same time, kicking slowly to glide along beside me.

“Did you sleep ok-k-kay?” he asks, throwing an arm over my shoulder, and cupping my cheek.

“Not really.” I swing my own arm around his waist, liking how he’s taller than me when on his board.

“But why…babe?”

He started calling me this a few days ago, and it makes the prettiest blush rise to his cheeks, and my own heart bump against my ribs.

“Bad dreams.” This is partly true. Last time I slept I dreamt of dark waves crashing overhead, drowning me as the neighing teeth of horses sang me to a watery death. I’d woken in a cold sweat, half dragged into my closet. Even unconscious I’d tried escaping, saving myself.

“My sweetheart,” he whispers, squeezing me in a side-hug as I help him turn the corner to the road that leads to his woods. The scrapes on his arm and both palms are slowly healing, dry scabs falling off in pieces, new skin left behind. He’d turned an adorable shade of pink when I asked how he’d gotten the cuts, eventually mumbling something about a men’s soccer team and falling off his board. He hid his face in my neck when I laughed and asked him to show me where.

We’ve taken a liking to meeting up in the mornings and going to the trees, spending most of the day in their webby shade, the ocean splashing somewhere below the cliffs, twittering birds hopping in the branches above us. We whisper and laugh, fingers laced, legs spread out before us. It's how I learned that his dad walked out on them when he was only two, or that his first crush had been on a boy in third grade that had thrown a ball at his face and given him the first in a line of bloody noses he would suffer in his life for listening to an instinct that is beautiful and natural. In halting sentences, he told me about making his first necklace and matching bracelet, twisting silver into tiny spiraled leaves for a ring he wore for months before thinking to bury them in the quest for immortality. I like hearing him talk, detecting the smallest lisp when he says my name. He still gets flustered when he stutters, going red and silencing himself with gritted jaw and nail bites. But I’ve noticed an ease come over him since that first day at the tracks. He's quick to smile, quick to hold me, quick to kiss.

And I love kissing him, the both of us by the cliffs, or under canopies of deep green. He makes these tiny noises, moans and whimpers, at my side one moment and the next crawled on my lap, grinding, squeezing me with his slim thighs.

God, I want him.

For only being a year and a half younger than me, he is unbearably gentle, a sweet and tender boy who makes me want to trail after him for the rest of his days, guarding him from danger, a loyal mutt to his master. He doesn't toy with me, and it boosts my devotion, how I know to worship. I've tasted his lips and parts of his skin; I've smelled the pulse at his neck and inhaled the scent of his hair. I want to feast on him and weep, and sleep beside him, above all.

Reaching the edge of the trees, he takes his board and we jump the tracks. But my balance is off and I stumble, heart racing as my anxiety spikes. The world is rushing up at me, or maybe the ocean. Where are the horses? The neighing, terrifying horses. Their teeth—.

"Hey," he murmurs, hand on my cheek. "You're sh-shaking. W-what's wrong?"

I shake my head to clear it, my sight blurring. I might pass out, but I'm usually somewhere at home when I do, careful about soft surfaces when the hours notch up like this. But I had to see him. I needed to.

"I'm just...I'm sorry, babe. But I think I need to lie down."

"Of c-c-course. Want...t-t-o go back?"

"No. No way. Let's go to our spot. I'll rest there."

His brows are scrunched, like he isn't convinced, and maybe he's right because when we take another step, my vision tilts and I nearly drag him down with me. His board clatters to the ground and he wraps both arms around my back, my name a panicked gasp on his lips. He never stutters my name. Never.

"Okay," I manage, falling to a knee. "Okay, I think I need to go home."

Together we make our way back. One arm around my waist, his board clutched in the other, Tom is wheezing as he half-carries me, stumbling over his words as his breathing hitches, asking me what’s wrong, what’s the matter. But I'm trying so hard not to drop unconscious at his feet to answer him properly. He finds my keys in my back pocket and pushes into the house, astounding me with his strength, his thin arms trembling to hold me upright. My dad’s at work, so the house is eerily still, all the blinds drawn.

“Hello?” he calls out, but I mumble, “No one’s here.”

My room is open and we crash through the door, the bed a bright beacon in my darkening tunnel of sight. Tom is saying something about an ambulance.

“No. No, babe. Babe, no. It’s okay. I’m okay. I just have to sleep.

See. This is what I mean about it making me weak.

“You’re not,” Tom says, face pinched as he lowers me to the edge of the mattress, and I realize I must have blurted something out. “You’re j-j-just nnnnot _well_.”

I’m fading too fast, my waist crumpling as I fall backward, his face scared and worried in the center of what remains of my sight. I try reaching for him, my hands scrabbling on his arms but I can’t find a grip and I flop back uselessly, gone.

**Tom:**

I stare down at him, throat bobbing as I think frantically what to do. What’s just happened? Is he okay?

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Okay. It’s okay. I prop a knee on the bed and reach over him to feel for a pulse. It’s there, beating strong, elevated even. My finger stays pressed to his neck, my hand smoothing over a cheek, watching as his lashes tremble just the slightest bit, the bruises under his eyes darker than before. I suddenly see what’s wrong.

He’s exhausted.

But why? It’s barely nine in the morning. Didn’t he sleep last night? Confused, I look down at his long legs spread out on the floor, bent slightly at the knee, looking so vulnerable despite their strength. I kneel and unlace his shoes, slipping them off and tucking them under the bed. Bringing his foot up, I hold it in both hands and press my cheek to the warm top, his sock soft on my skin.

Maneuvering him on the bed is harder than I thought. His torso starts to twist as I elevate his legs so that he may lie more comfortably. I have to adjust first his feet and then scoot his shoulders, sweat sprouting on my face. He doesn’t even stir, so deeply asleep he is. But at least now he’s lying horizontal on the bed, sprawled out. His wrists look strangely delicate against his rumpled bedspread, cocked at a high angle, wrongly exposed. I fix them so that they face down, his big hands spread open.

Glancing around his room, I see that there’s not much here, just his bed and a small desk, on which rests a laptop and some chewed on pencil nubs. He has a small TV on a short stand, a pair of tennis shoes in the corner, his closet half open to reveal shaded clothing. I’m about to leave when something white catches my eyes. Sticking out from under his pillow is the edge of a notepad.

Hesitating, I glance at his face. So still and calm, blown open and revealing a much younger heart than he lets on. Does he keep a journal? The thought thrills me and I can’t help reaching for the pad and taking a seat at the edge of the bed, reading the first page. I notice immediately that he’s scrawled my name over and over in the shape of a heart, doodles and doodles of it.

“Sweetie,” I breathe and lay a hand on his quietly rumbling chest. But it’s what I read below that confuses and concerns me. In a stilted hand, he has written:

_Hours without sleep: 19, 20, 19, 17, 30, 21, 21, 32, 27, 22, 22, 26, 28._

And today is blank because he had no idea how long it would be before his body literally gave out, sleep controlling him on autopilot.

On the days he does sleep, he wrote:

1am to 5:57am. 9pm to 12:45am. 2pm to 6:13pm. On and on, a map of numbers that proved he got on average three to five hours of sleep. Or none at all.

He moans suddenly and it vibrates up my arm. I drop the pad and snatch my hand away, eyes wide as he shifts and curls away from me, his big shoulders tapering low to his narrow waist, a slumbering giant I am afraid to wake, but desperately tempted to. Creeping closer again, I curl my legs under me and lean against his back, hugging him from behind. He’s so warm, heat pouring off him and into me. I soak it in and inhale at the messy, bunched bun. Under the edge of the collar of his shirt, I spy the dark outline of another tattoo. Or maybe it's an extension of his sleeve, but it's dark and curved and I want to see it.

Using the tip of my finger, I lift his shirt an inch and dip my head to peer inside. It's too dark to make out much besides his tangled necklaces - including the one I made, a flash of silver by a light brown nipple, peaked - and more inked design and the broader curve of a well-defined pectoral. My mouth dries suddenly and I'm tempted to slip my hand along his clavicle when he gives another soft moan. I hunch over him instinctually, squeezing myself to his back as if that will hide me should he wake and wonder why I'm pasted to him like a sticky slug.

I lie there frozen, holding him and liking how it feels, this big body brimming with heat and muscle, like a bomb that might go off and drown me in light.

“It’s o-k-kay,” I whisper, internally chastising myself for the stumble. I slow my breathing, slow my words. “I will protect you. While you sleep. Rest, my sweetheart. Rest.”

I think I sleep for a little while too, because when I next open my eyes he's turned towards me and my head is tucked under his, our cheeks pressed together. But he's breathing so deep and even, and I know he's farther away from me than he's ever been. He's needed this, and I would never deny him a thing.

Untwisting myself from his embrace is tricky, first shifting my feet off the bed and then rolling my knees to the side. His arms come up higher on my waist but before he can squeeze me to him, I slide right between them and rise clumsily, my heart pounding. Embracing nothing but air, he falls forward on the pillow and huffs shortly before going still and quiet.

I want him so much, the ache is fervent and demanding, a needy, pulsing thing that's curled its way to the base of my pelvis and lies in quiet wait. My hand spreads open below my belly button, pressing flat, and I catch a moan before it spills. He's unconscious and I shouldn't keep touching him while touching myself. I'm moving before I lose my nerve, pulse thumping at my throat. I keep his house key and hurry through the hall to lock the front door, finally leaving through his bedroom window. Slanting the blinds up an inch, I make sure I can peer into his room from the outside before closing the pane. The next several hours I spend in a tense mood, my shoulders tight, sweat popping on my brow. I avoid skating by his house, afraid my rasping board might wake him. But I travel back and forth until nightfall, spying through his blinds, always relieved when I find him in a different position than before, his chest still rising, still falling. Alive. Eventually, his father arrives home and I keep my distance for a few minutes, but curiosity gets the better of me and I step into the bed of soil and hedges outside his window and watch as he comes into Chris’s room, flicking the light on, casting the dark room in a washed out dullness of overhead brightness.

 _Turn it off_ , I plead in my mind. But Chris remains asleep, even as his father leans over him, whispers something. Receiving no response, he pats Chris’s shoulder gently and leaves a water bottle on the desk, exiting as quietly as he entered, turning the light off as he passes the doorway.

My heart eases at witnessing his father do this, surprised to admit that I’d been wary of the man, not knowing the type he might be. If he was impatient or cruel. Thoughtless and vile. But I feel much better about him after seeing him walk so quietly around the room, his humbly noble bearing. He didn’t want to wake his son either.

In the end, I’m just happy that this instance seems to be different from Chris’s usual three hour naps. It’s approaching midnight by the time I drag myself back to my own room, dropping heavily to the bed and falling asleep, but not before thinking I should have put Chris’s phone to charge. That maybe I should text him where I might be tomorrow in case he wakes and misses me.

Something in me says he will.

**Chris:**

There’s a crick in my neck the second I wake, and I moan as it becomes sharper the more I come out of the shrouded fog of sleep. I’m swimming in semi-consciousness when I suddenly bolt upright in bed, pain spiking up my back from a twitching muscle.

“Tom,” I rasp. The room is blurry and settles into focus slowly. I blink and wince, my back a giant ache that needs to go the fuck away, like now. The clock on my desk reads 9:01am.

Holy shit. Did I just sleep for almost twenty-four hours?

I scramble to unearth my phone from the pocket of my jeans, but the screen remains black as I tap the home button. Dead. Useless.

“Goddammit.”

My bladder is bursting, so I visit the bathroom first and groan up at the ceiling as I unload what feels like several gallons of piss. I wash my face - stubble patches on my cheek and slightly swollen eyes - and brush my teeth before pulling my hair into a quick ponytail. I’m out the front door and running down the street in under five minutes. Tom’s house has a totally different vibe from mine. His mom seems to work just as much as my dad, but she’s attempted to keep a small garden with cute multicolored stones framing the path to the front door. There are tiny figurines of fairies and gnomes that give me the creeps, butterfly pinwheels and a sunflower cutout. I wonder if Tom helps her garden sometimes, and I’m assaulted with the image of him on his knees in the dirt, up to his elbows in soil, patting the ground lovingly as a fresh green stalk of something pretty sprouts from the ground.

My groin tightens and I hurry around the side of the house to his bedroom. The shades are open and I cup my hands around my eyes and peer in, hoping his mother isn’t in there vacuuming or something. But the room is empty and I see his board is missing from where he keeps it in the corner.

There’s only one other place I think he’ll go and feel totally safe and that’s to his woods. The assholes I’d found trying to beat on him had kept their distance, thankfully. Even so, I head west at a full sprint, my hands shaking not from fatigue this time, but from tingling exhilaration, my mind at the sharpest its been in weeks. I hop the tracks and race straight through the first trees, following our well-beaten path to the one I know he’s up in, winding his twine and choosing his silver.

Only, instead of the quiet that I’ve come to know and expect around him, I’m met with the most curious and lovely sound. From high in the treetops, floating on the breeze, I hear singing.

Surprised, I circle the tree and see his board under its hiding place of leaves. It’s him up there, I realize, and he’s _singing_.

Staring straight up, I can barely see through the green and white canopy of leaves his outline perched on the highest branch, legs swinging adorably, head bent over his jewelry. His voice is faint from my position on the ground, but I can tell it’s strong and confident, smooth as porcelain but swollen just slightly deep, throaty enough to make my groin tighten – again.

And completely stutter-free.

Mouth dry, I crane my neck up and listen to his voice, his song.

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were famous, your heart was a legend. You told me again you preferred handsome men, but for me you would make an exception. And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself. You said, well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music."

I can't help it. So enamored of the rise and fall of his words, the melody he gives them, the tender lisp I know is there but can't quite hear, I take a step forward, wanting more of the song, more of him. But a twig snaps underfoot and his words cut off with a sharp gasp.

Shit. I've scared him.

"It's me!" I call, lifting a hand to the tree. "It's Chris."

"Chris!" he exclaims, voice lifting happily, and through the gaps in the leaves I make out his blue eyes like the ocean, a blue green purple kind of sparkling starlight, squinted as he grins down at me. He puts aside what he was working on and starts to climb down, leaves sprinkling around me from his weight. When he finally launches himself from the lowest limb, I catch him and we tumble to the floor in muted giggles. Arms wrapped around my head, he plants dozens of kisses on my face, whispering how much he missed me. The necklace I gave him swings out of his green shirt and laps at my throat.

“Aaaaare you alright?” he asks, the first syllable coming out in one extended sound, round and long like the ‘o’ in otter. I frame his face before he can turn away and lean up to kiss him hard. He moans and softens around me, his body melting on mine. But he weighs nothing to me, bones like a bird.

We break apart with a loud smack and I zip my sight over all of him, flushed cheeks, hazy eyes, mouth parted. I run the tip of my tongue over my bottom lip and taste him there, a bit of sea and turn of sky, salt and leaf. His eyes follow my tongue and he inadvertently licks his own. We smile and bump noses.

“I’m fine, babe. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“You look better,” he says, his voice back to that soft wisp he uses when concentrating really hard on his stuttering. He traces a thumb over my cheekbone. “No more b-bruises here. You…aaaren’t…fainting.”

I bristle, the skin of my neck tightening, but I try to tamp it down, knowing it’s just my own bullshit misconceptions about myself and any shortcomings I may have. He’d been frightened for me.

“You were singing,” I say instead and his eyes immediately shutter closed. He untangles himself from me and starts to rise but I grip his elbows. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I d-d-didn’t lie.”

“Lie? About what, babe?” I sit up and fold him to my chest, dry leaves clinging to our clothes. Running a hand over his head, I feel how hot his scalp is, moist from the heat, and I want to bury my nose into this crown of curls. But then I realize what he means, how he didn’t once stutter while he sang. With a pinched brow, he looks to be working up to something so I wait, tracing the outline of his ear with my nose.

Very serious, eyes down, he says, “You…think I am a liar?”

“No.”

He nods and takes a deep breath.

“I’m not. But…I’ve realized that it d-doesn’t happen when I sing.”

"Your stuttering?"

He nods, lashes low.

"Do you know why?"

A short shrug, timid and a bit stung. He doesn’t often have to explain himself to anyone, people’s initial brushing off of everything he says or does allowing him a sense of stubborn independence that he uses as a way of not talking. It’s easier that way, maybe. His words are pent up barbs that he struggles to swallow or risk spitting out in stilted, jerking phrases that he thinks belittles him to others, makes him less. And maybe he does know why his stuttering disappears when he sings, or maybe he doesn’t; but just so long as he sings.

Because his voice is lovely. And so is he.

"You know what I think?" His eyes slide slowly to mine, cautious, curious, lingering at my lips. I widen them in a smile for him, and he offers an echo of it to me. "I think that you're really pretty and I want to kiss you."

He sits up, brightening. "Yeah?"

And because the ground is spongy and laced with sunlight patches I rise to my knees and pull him to me, my hands bracketing his face. Our lips meet slowly, his breath warm on my tongue, but he's leaning into me fast with these wicked sounds and his _mouth_. And then I'm tipping him backward and he yields easily as I lay him on the ground to cover him with my body, wanting to blanket him forever, keep him warm and dry and safe.

"So p-p-perfect. You're so perfect, Chris."

I can't speak. My mouth is a magnet to the steel plane of his neck, the tendons long and lean, his blond curls tickling my nose as I move higher to nibble at his ear. And there, with the salt of sweat and loam, is coconut milk. I moan and he arches, gasping, digging his fingers into my back, because his ears are my favorite place to worship, so sensitive, guaranteed to make him mush in my arms.

“You know that song. The one you were singing?”

“Uh huh,” he mumbles, staring dazedly through his lashes.

“Know what it’s about?”

A tiny exhalation, a breeze at my temple. “What?”

“Sex.”

He tilts his hips and sparks grind at the back of my jaw. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Leonard Cohen wrote the song about Janis Joplin. How she gave him a—fuck, babe.” I grip the knobby point of his hipbone and give a small thrust. I could dry hump him for years just for the singular pleasure of watching his face break open, a tender little line between his brows, berry mouth parted. “How she gave him a blow job,” I manage, wheezing.

“But—.” He swallows and opens his eyes, glitter bright. “A girl sings in the version I know.”

“I like the way you sing it.”

He goes red, a spill of crimson that makes the soft baby hairs at his temple, his every eyelash, turn white. His hands squeeze into my backside and a small whimper rolls from his mouth to mine. “D-d-don’t stop. Chris, please.”

I don’t answer and instead crash our mouths together, my hips snapping as he squeals and tries to meet my thrusts. We're stumbling and apologetic, moaning and grasping. A heat builds up in our pants, the fabric bunching and almost painful against our seizing crotches. We half-roll and he throws a leg over my waist, my access to his core that much better. Lying on our sides, I try chasing that coconut milk scent around the length of his neck, and we’re panting as the sun shines down from directly above, its bald head arcing through the treetops. Tom’s lips draw spirals on me, tracing paths on every inch of my face, closing in a bow over the tip of my nose and then moving to my chin where he licks at my stubble and moans my name. His hand slinks around my waist, and stays planted at the center of my spine. It’s so intimate, so comforting to me, that I let out a small sob, imagining us back on my bed where we might fuck and make each other come and then I can press my face to his throat and sleep.

But we’re in his woods, and it isn’t safe. I don’t care about myself, but I want him unharmed and protected always, and lying naked on the forest floor where anybody could stumble upon us isn’t good for him. Not with another year of high school left. And he’s looking up at me with eyes nearly wild with abandon, zipping frantically between my own.

Using my arm as a cushion against the hard ground, I hug him close and press our foreheads together. “Gonna come for me? Yeah?”

He nods, heated and swelling, blunt nails stabbing crescent marks in my skin. He’s pulling at me, heel digging into the back of my thigh, quick wet noises bubbling up his throat as I thrust and rub down on him. And then his eyes roll up and just like that, he gasps.

I clamp down hard on his arms and roll him onto his back, thrusting half a dozen times more until I come with a growl, hunched over him like a gorilla over his pretty mate. The whites of his eyes show when he shudders once more and I stare at him, stunned.

That I did this to him. That he’s feeling this because of me. But I’m no one.

“Chris,” he murmurs, and I finally exhale, relieved at the identity, that I’m someone to him.

With our gunk pooling in our briefs, I sag onto him, our mushy bodies somehow softer post-orgasm, molding and giving, perfect cradles for the other.

“You’re the prettiest,” I breathe, smacking kisses on his face and neck. “So beautiful. You sing and you smile. And I’m going to ask you the corniest fucking question, but do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Tom’s throat bobs as he barks out a laugh, big and deep, the kind that finds its way down my tonsils and curls up around my heart. I’ll remember that laugh forever.

“Yes!” he shouts and our teeth scrape when we reach for each other at the same time, producing more giggles and bumped canines, my heart a swollen bundle of ribbons in my chest.

**Tom:**

I have a boyfriend and his name is Chris. I was a little afraid of him at first, certainly intimidated too. He’s so much bigger than me, and as someone who gets physically accosted several times a semester because of the stammer-induced quiet I nurture with nearly everyone, bigger tends to make me nervous. But he’s nothing to be afraid of. If anything, his size makes me feel like the safest china doll in the cupboard, strong and oiled sturdy wood boxing me in for safe-keeping. I'm fascinated by the command he has over his voice. I could stare at his mouth for ages.

Some days we go to artsy shops located by the bay. He’s bought me a new set of silver charms to work into my jewelry and I’ve made him another necklace that he’s looped in with his other chains. We eat burgers under the red and white striped umbrellas of the outdoor restaurant, sanded concrete under our shoes. He comes with me to the woods, but refuses to climb to my perch in the highest tree. I think it has to do with his fear of falling unconscious should his internal sleep timer go off and he’s not flat-footed on the ground. He’s only just recently started talking about it. At my shy – and hopefully not annoying – insistence, he confessed to me about his insomnia.

“I go so long without sleep, babe. My mind starts to crackle, like something's about to catch fire inside my skull." We're lying on the beach below the cliffs, and the surf is tickling our toes. The sun is down and the sky is the bruised color of grape juice. I'm lying on my back staring up at the stars beginning to make their pinpricking appearance, and Chris is sprawled over me with his face in my neck, a part of my body I've come to learn he loves very much. His hair is loose and sliding smoothly through my fingers as I scratch lightly at his scalp. I keep quiet, thinking he might actually slip into sleep without a fuss - and I'm more than prepared to spend the night with him under the canopy of ocean sky if it means he rests - but then he murmurs, "Makes everything fuzzy. I hate it."

"How long has it been this time?"

He gives a vague shrug, reminding me of myself. "Eighteen. Nineteen hours, maybe."

I take a deep breath, to settle my words. "And...do you ever...feel when it might be ending?" So many of the instances where I can control my stuttering revolve around how I breathe. I'm learning how to understand it better, even if it makes me sound like a total airhead.

"It's very sudden. I'll just get dizzier than usual. My balance will be off. Like a blanket gets wrapped around my head and I'm stumbling in the dark. That's how it feels. The sooner I lie down, the sooner I give in and rest."

I remember my cousins watching a movie when I was younger about a man who had severe insomnia. During one of the moments I skipped through the room for water I was surprised to see the man duct-taping his window to prevent any sunlight from seeping through, eyes wild with panic and paranoia. The thought made me squeeze my arms around Chris and nuzzle his forehead. How terrible this affliction, how unsettling, to retreat even from the light of the sun.

“It’s why I run and work out. To tire myself out.” He sniffs and slides his nose under my jawline, lifting his head and staring down at me. “Let’s run now. Me and you.”

“R-r-run?”

“Yeah. It’s like an itch I get. A swarm under my skin. I have to move.” He’s already on his knees, stooping and chucking off his shoes, slipping his warm socks under each heel. Excitement thrills through me and I’m ridding myself of my own shoes. We leave my board and our phones on the beach and take off at a sprint. I’m flying next to him and he’s laughing, which makes me laugh, and we cartwheel and bounce through the sand. It’s dark and the breeze coming off the water is cool and brimmed with salt, sticking to my tongue like beads.

Skidding to a stop, knuckles grazing, we huff out heavy breaths and stare out at the crashing waves, thunderous, their advancing and retreating heard more than seen, great pounding blasts and the evaporating mist of the foam in the moonlight.

"I want to go in!" I yell, the volume of my voice giving my words enough weight to force them out of my mouth. He snaps his head to me, and I catch a small moment of hesitation.

"Really?"

I nod, gazing at his hair turned white under the moon.

"It's dark in there, babe."

_Not if I dive in with the sun._

Without another word I take off toward the water, my legs closing the distance in the space of a few breaths. I have no thoughts of nightly predators, the sharks and electric jellyfish that might be roaming. But then he's suddenly beside me, grabbing my hand and holding on tight as we lope through the first few feet of it and then launch into the ocean, diving in just under a rising wave. Warmth swallows us whole, the quiet like a roar in my ears, bubbles and the heartbeat of these ancient waters pulsing through me like a shock. My hand is still clenched tightly in Chris's, only now he's wrapped both arms around my back and huddles me close as we twirl and thrash under the force of it, invaders to the established superiority of this prehistoric entity.

We emerge, tossed about and sputtering for air. It's surprising how far out we are, but the ocean is a wieldy, possessive muscle that desires to claim. It had sampled us and craved more.

"Babe!" he sputters, water spraying. "Hang on." Chris has an arm around my waist and hitches me up his torso as best he can, but we’re being carried with the current. I can feel the heat of the deeper tug beneath our bodies, and the cool, lapping water at our chins. "We're going to have to hustle back in. Ready to swim?"

I nod and he gives me a solid shove toward shore, my body propelled one moment and then sinking again. I start kicking and cutting my arms through the water, hearing him at my side doing the same. But we're smiling and near giggles by the time sand sponges under our feet and we drag ourselves out. Our clothes are heavy and sagging off our bodies and my teeth are chattering despite the heat. The adrenaline scissors through my veins, sharpening my sight and alighting star sparks from my skin. I could float away if I wanted, tap a trail up the tail of Leo and curve around the edge of the moon to spy on my beloved with my chin in hand, smiling amusedly at his handsome quirks, sprinkling glitter dust on him if he needs a bit of luck. Or sleep.

The sand sinks around our forms when we collapse with snorted laughter, salt drying in the corners of our mouths and frosting on our eyebrows. He's staring at me like maybe I'm a king, and it feels so wonderful I blush and duck my chin.

But then his eyes go suddenly wide with horror and he's snatching me by my arms, hauling me over him.

"Christ!" he screams, and I roll with a confused cry, turning around to stare right into the beady eyes of a giant crab. Sharp pincers up, it held one slightly prone forward and I realize with a frantic grab at my ear that it had been about to pinch me. "Fuck this shit! Come on, babe." We stagger to our feet, Chris throwing half-hearted kicks at the little creature that involved more tossed sand than actual harm, but we retreat and collect our things, mouths meeting in quick, furtive kisses as we climb the slopes in the near dark, slipping and catching each other with hushed concern.

"Will you s-s-sleep?" I ask as he climbs in through his window, despite having a key.

"I don't know," he says quietly. "I'm guessing maybe. But if not, I won't leave. Just in case."

"My sweetheart," I gasp and we rush at each other over the windowsill, heavy-handed gropes and smacking kisses.

"God, you're amazing," he moans and half-drags me inside, my knees scraping on the metal track of the window. "Shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, babe. I'm sorry."

I kiss him in forgiveness and crawl back out. He waves at me from the darkness of his room when I stop at the street lamp at the corner. His hand is an unfurled flag of peace in a country I don't want to leave, but I force my own up in farewell and jump on my board for home.

**Chris:**

Tom's messages dropped off after midnight but I'm still awake. I tend to avoid caffeine like the plague, found that it makes me too wired, jittery. But the smell of it wafting under my doorway from the kitchen as my dad gets ready to leave for the day is nearly excruciating, my mouth watering and stomach cramping. I know I shouldn't - I don't even like the taste of the stuff - so I sit in my closet with my hands over my ears and rock in place until I know he's gone for sure. I unfold myself quickly and rush to the kitchen, dumping the dregs still left in the pot down the drain. I cram a blueberry muffin into my mouth and down it with cold milk, feeling only moderately better. Going on my thirty-second hour, I'm still fidgeting. The buzzing has started in my head and the edge of my vision has gone grey.

He may still be asleep. It's only a little before seven. But I'm imagining him tucked under a fort of blankets and pillows, whiff of coconut milk embedded so deeply into the fibers I couldn't escape him even if I wanted. And who would want to? Who?

I'm pacing the living room, sniffing out the room as if he were there, anxious and impatient and desperate to get out. But it's the snippets of another image that keep sizzling into view. Of a cut off scream and veins engorged in pain. My mother's terror-struck face aimed right at me. Frank with his arm bent askew, skin crumpled nastily, a bone snapped somewhere under it. By me.

I didn't. I didn't do that. I couldn't have. I've never hurt anyone that I wasn't protecting, hurting to protect them. But what other answer is there?

I'm not a monster. I'm not an unhinged brute.

I pause in the living room and rasp a hand down my face. Am I?

Before I convince myself of terrible things I'm grabbing my keys and slamming out the front door. I run down the street, the early morning still dewy and slightly green. There's a smell of shorn grass and sea salt. It's not like I think he will heal me. I would never put that burden on him. But my crushing need to smell him is so strong that it isn't until I trip over a watering hose do I realize I'm crying, hot tears spilling from my lashes.

"Sorry—," someone starts to say, rising from her garden, but I wave her off and start running again. I slide so hard on the pavement when his house looms into view that I land flat on my ass, scraping my left arm up to my elbow. Tom's mom is getting into her car, almost forgetting her own coffee on the roof before reaching up for it and securing it in the cup holder.

I gulp in deep breaths of air, forcing myself to calm down. I'll give myself a heart attack at this rate. She takes her time buckling in and checking both ends of the street before backing out carefully. I'm crouched on the balls of my feet ready to burst from my cage like an enraged bull. As soon as she's out of sight I hurry forward and around the side of the house. His bedroom is kitty-corner to the street, slightly obscured by a large hedge budding purple flowers. I'm careful not to step on any figurines his mom has so lovingly placed in even the most out of the way spots, and then cup my hands over my eyes to peer in. His blinds are closed nearly all the way, but I can make out his desk and bureau drawer stacked with books and video games. There's a stick of deodorant and a brush with a nest of blond curls caught in its teeth. A bookcase with more books, a TV, his board.

The bed is against the corner farthest from the window and I can barely make out a slumped form under the blankets. I rap my knuckles on the pane of glass and wait. He doesn't move. I do it again, a little louder and the sheets shift, just barely.

"Please, babe," I whisper, eyes out on the street, but the worst is in my head, something I can't escape from.

I need him to hear me.

I need him.

**Tom:**

I was dreaming, and then I wasn't. I bolt upright in bed, the sheets dropping to my waist, my hair springing everywhere.

My voice, syrupy with sleep, doesn’t remember to stumble. "What?"

I’m facing the wall and maybe I woke myself. But as I’m about to lie back down, the knocks come again, more urgently this time and I spin to squint at the window. A shape looms there like a giant demon spirit, but when I crack my other eye open I see that it's Chris.

"Oh," I gasp, spilling from the bed and unbolting the window. Now that I'm awake he looks suddenly uncertain, gaze cast down, almost ashamed, ready to bolt.

"A-a-are you alright?" I say, wincing.

He only says my name, a small exhalation, a plea. The more I wake the more I see of him, his terrified eyes, the disheveled mane of hair, the scrape down his arm. I mentally kick myself, wondering if our jump into the ocean gave him bad dreams, but that would have to mean that he slept, and I know instinctually that he hasn't. His is a look of someone cornered and approaching feral.

"Sweetheart," I whisper and his eyes snap up to meet mine. He's panicked, the bruises under his eyes darker, deeper. I take a step forward. "You're shaking."

"I'm," he starts, and then licks his lips. A shudder courses through him, near defeat. "I'm so tired." And then his shoulders give a terrible tremor and he's sobbing into his hands.

"No, darling!" I reach for him and tug him into my room, helping him crawl over the biting metal. He's trembling and hot with fever, but it's his eyes, the blue made somehow sharper by exhaustion and strain, pupils pinpricked in all his fear. And his lips, so full and lovely, glistening as he cries, downturned at the edges, a sweet and woeful pout that has something flaring inside me so suddenly, burning and whipping to a gargantuan size, that I wrap him in my arms and pull him to the bed. He's barely coherent, tears in his eyes, holding my arms as he grits his jaw.

"I just want to sleep," he moans, heavy with woe too old for him, too dark for his brightness. "Will you put me to sleep? Please? Can I smell you?"

"Shh, th-there now," I whisper, soothing his hair and standing before him. He turns his face into my palm and gives another tiny broken moan, and my heart cracks in two. Swallowing thickly, I unlace his shoes and pull them off. He's wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt, so I leave those alone. But his mumbles are spotty, something about veins and bones snapping, and I can't follow. "Lie back now. Like that. Yeah." He falls back to my pillows but won't release his hold on me, his big hands wrapped around my elbows. I crawl in beside him and face us side by side. "Sleep now. S-s-sleep here with me. You'll be j-just fine."

"No one should want me," he hisses, half-conscious. His eyes roll up but he snaps back into alertness, lashes spiked and wet, struggling to win over the pull inside his mind. Another damp sob, a hoarse and broken thing from deep in his chest. "I'm no good."

I can only stare at him, distressed at these imaginings. It isn't true, I want to scream. I want you. I want you always. But a quote I'd read not too long ago slips into my mind and I whisper it from memory. “Christopher. Sweetheart. 'Who wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite could you possibly fail to answer'?"

His eyes slide to mine, swimming half in this world, half out. The shift in them is clouded, delayed; he’s struggling to stay present. My heart seizes because I can't stomach such pain. Not his. Never his.

"You love me?" he says, head cocked like a little boy, the softest I'd heard him speak, words he perhaps meant to lay like a kiss on the stars he partially found himself on. But I nod and answer yes, I do love you, I do. Because this swell of emotion in my chest can’t be simple like, can it? It can’t be simple lust, either. It’s a physical throb, and I love when it catches me by surprise. Thoughts of him like twinges in my ribcage.

“I love you,” I whisper again, our noses nudging.

His lashes, long and blond and beaded, collapse low and he exhales another small, anxious moan before his words twist through my mind again - _will you put me to sleep_? - and I'm wrapping my arms around him and cradling him to my chest. I start to rock slowly, his body taut with surprised tension, held stiffly in my embrace as I hum and hush him gently. And then like a fretful child, he slowly relaxes and tucks his face against mine, sweetly. After a short while, his body goes slack, becoming heavier. A warm sleeper. Fevered.

I settle down against him and hold him to me, lifting his arm carefully and fitting myself to his body I now know is as much mine as my own. His tufted breaths sweep my throat and eventually I fall back asleep too, our bodies shared in a heavy embrace. Back is the china-doll feel, engulfed by steel, content that nothing would hurt me, that I would remain without cracks.

He's asleep so deeply when I wake later in the morning. That half-lidded, comatose reign of slumber, his body warm and nestled on the bed like a great long bear. Face opposite his, I curl his heavy arm higher on the bend of my waist, a giant hand dangling listlessly across my spine. And still he sleeps on, chest rising and falling with the shallow near-death breaths of the truly restful. Only, when I shift too suddenly his hand clenches shut in the center of my backbone, a quiet thrum of power vibrating up over my spine, under his palm. My breath catches, frozen still as I study his face with its haunting remnants of heartbreak. He makes a soft noise in his throat and leans forward, his nose pressed to my pulse, taking a few small sniffs and then shifting to lie more evenly on me, moaning as he settles. My little squeak is a mix of surprise, muted alarm, and blatant arousal, his weight like nothing I've ever experienced before.

I tilt my hips a small degree upward and feel the full thickness of him, his groin rounded by two heavy balls and the long, limp curve of his cock. The ceiling is pockmarked with a granulated design, and I keep my eyes on it as I feel myself stir just slightly, trying to swallow around my sudden bubbly anticipation. It's dampened by the fact that he's asleep and I would rather throw myself out a window than wake him now that he's finally been granted what he's so obviously craved and needed. But it's nice to feel him on me, over me, crowding me, and I while away the morning with soft and sexual imaginings of the two of us together, slicked and joined and frantic. I can’t help but think of some of the videos I’ve seen online, and where I want him buried the most, how he might ever fit. But I want all of him, in my mouth, in my core, breathing him in, swallowing him whole. I satisfy myself with skimming my lips over each eyebrow, smelling the scent of his hairline, his skin as sweet to me as if he were made of crushed sugar.

My arousal is never fully realized as I hold myself back, content to simply hold him and stroke his hair. I sleep and wake again, sluggish and with crusted eyes. Our limbs are twisted together, so that I don't know where my arms begin and his legs end. We're damp and seeping heat and I am squirming to pee. But both his arms are wrapped around behind me, as if his fear - of waking alone, of his nightmares, of waking at all? - was ingrained in muscle memory.

My bladder gives an impatient pinch, and I wince against his forehead. Thinking of how to turn my ankle and unwrap my arm from under his neck, I know I have to move very carefully. I shift my legs about first, sliding my ankles from between his calves and over to the edge of the mattress, twisting my torso away from him as I go. His arms tighten fractionally just as I'm about to rise. Smoothing back his hair, I hush him soothingly and he relaxes into the mattress again.

Tiptoe down the hall, turn the knob closed, lift the toilet seat, push my boxers down and then _release_. It's one of the best things to feel after hours of holding it in, reminiscent of the pleasure of orgasm, the swell of it up my chest, a rush of pure relief. My cock gives a twinge midstream and I grit my teeth to hold my groan in. This proximity to Chris has my sensory levels skyrocketing, my skin alive, invisible feelers stretching out from me for any kind of taste of him. I'm smiling when I catch my reflection in the mirror, hands bubbled with soap, my hair springing up in every direction. He likes his hands in my hair, petting it and curling his fingers in for a little tug. Makes chills race down my spine every time, slinking fingers across his own scalp, liking the slow grin and tingled kisses that follow. Naughty, wicked, sleepy kitten.

My stomach is growling when I slip into the kitchen a minute later. I eat a whole grain banana muffin and I'm on the last swallow of a glass of milk when a shadow nudges into the corner of my view.

Milk sputters down my chin when I spin, droplets falling to the tile floor.

Chris is at the entranceway to the kitchen, swaying where he stands, feet bare, calves veined and furred in light brown hair. His eyes are half-lidded, shorts hanging low on his hips, shirt askew exposing a long collarbone, more inked skin, big hands clawed limply. I set the cup down on the counter and wipe my chin. His gaze is focused somewhere on the floor, and I realize suddenly he might still be asleep.

"Hey," I say slowly, but he makes no response, no movement. I don't want him hitting the floor face first, so I approach him and stand toe to toe. "Chris?"

He blinks sluggishly, like the reaction of a drugged man. Taking his shoulders I guide him down the hall, his nose in my neck taking a small sniff. It's straight to the pillows once back in my room, crawling in under the sheets to embrace as we were before. In several seconds he’s asleep—if he was ever awake—and snoring quietly at my throat. I reach for a book I'd thrown on the floor yesterday and begin reading, happily content to lie here with him while he gets much needed rest. We would have spent the day together anyway. At least here he is safe.

I sneak away again in the early afternoon for a quick lunch. I eat it by the kitchen window, watching as a pair of birds builds a nest under the eave of our back porch. I drink water and visit the bathroom and am back in his arms for more reading. He whispers sometimes, words I can catch like _bone_ and _sorry_ and _please_ and _mom_. I don’t understand why, but I hope his dreams aren’t too terrible. Like me, he seems like someone who might carry burdens into their subconscious if too heavy and too sad. But his voice is a thrum that seeps into me and I like to imagine it as a bolt of wire that wraps around my bones and makes me stronger, makes my words like metal, without flaws or snags. Smooth. Serene.

With my palm on the curve of his skull, I like to imagine that sleep works on him like a literal balm, healing anything inside his head that might be strained or aching, a blanket of twinkling little lights that absorb his hurt and leaves something cool and soothing in its wake.

Mostly we're quiet, something I'm comfortable with and what he desperately needs. Mostly I play with his hair and whisper inaudibly that he's the most beautiful boy I know. That I love very much to look at him and hear him speak. That I love him very much. Because I'm seventeen years old and it's okay for me to feel something this big and not be worried or afraid what it might mean for me or us tomorrow or the next week or the next few years. I love him now and will continue to do so every day until we one day don't. If that ever happens.

But as I hold him to my chest, a thin pillow for his leanly muscled bulk, his grip on me strong even unconscious, I sincerely hope it never does.

**

I can imagine him as a child, a husky little thing, short legs downed with soft golden hairs, big round giggles as he plays flag football or baseball, grunting through tackles or infield throws, sweat in his eyes, flakes of grass stuck on his skin. His hair would have been long, like now, past his ears maybe. Or maybe it was shorn short, grudgingly accepted, not wanting to let his father down.

And maybe he had dimples.

He’s lost all that baby fat since, only his cheeks slightly plump. No dimples on him anymore, except maybe on his tailbone, but I haven’t seen him there yet. I’m humming a soft lullaby when I hear the front door open. The clock on my desk shoots the hour out at me in angry red numbers, and I can’t believe I’ve lost track of the time. Panic blazes through me at the thought of my mom walking in my room and seeing us lying here together. I’m not entirely sure she would; sometimes she goes straight to the kitchen or her room, tired from her shifts, but I can’t take that risk. I don’t know how she’ll react, if she might wake Chris, if she might hate me. Before she can get far, I slip out of Chris’s embrace and hold a pillow for him to wrap himself around instead. His eyes stay closed as he hugs it to him, nose pressed to the fabric, and I hurry to throw some shorts on. Her keys are clattering on the table when I walk into the kitchen a minute later.

"Oh!" She almost trips when she glances over at me, and I wonder if maybe Chris left me a hickey I don't remember, or worse, do I have a hard-on? "Didn't expect to see you here." I bunch my brows and she waves a hand distractedly. "You've been out quite a bit lately."

Oh. I didn't know she'd noticed. I shrug and head for the fridge. Chris is going to wake up _ravenous_.

"Made some new friends, maybe?" Or any, it's left unsaid.

Just one, I think. And he's my boyfriend. But I shrug again and fill a cup with water and hand it to her. I start making her an egg sandwich.

"Thanks, Hun." She plops down at the table and toes off her shoes. “These puppies are so done. I think I’ll just soak in the tub and then sleep. You okay for dinner without me?”

Smearing mayo on two slices of bread, I nod. “Oh sure. I c-can grab some food and t-t-t-take to my room." I don't look to see if she winced, instead pour her some chips and take a steadying breath. Slow the words, slow them. "I will just stay in my room and finally pass my game. Might take hours." I smile, my face warming. I put the plate of food before her and she squeezes my hand.

"That's fine, Hun. I know you'll keep it down."

I leave her at the table and putter around in the bathroom until I hear her go to her room. The gush of a tub faucet seeps through the walls and I hurry back to the kitchen and make another sandwich. I grab a water bottle and the entire bag of chips and return to my room, opening the door with a crooked wrist, Chris's food bunched in my arms. The late afternoon light pours in through the slanted blinds, spearing my eyes with solid bars of pure, blinding gold, and I squint painfully. Closing the door with a careful click, I see through a watery film that Chris is still asleep, his long body spread like a giant starfish in my sheets, face down, rounded bulge of biceps, elbows pointed, bunched shirt and patch of smooth skin, the tender and clean balls of his feet angled up at me. The scrape on the underside of his forearm is darker today. There should be some ointment in the bathroom.

Setting the food down on my desk, I settle on the floor with my legs crossed. Spine straight, palms on my knees, I rotate my neck and feel my muscles stretch, the tug feeling so good after lying down for so long. Next are my legs, nose to the ceiling, lifting my feet in the air and stretching my hamstrings. Arms up, I let gravity fuse my bones to the floor as I breathe in and out, his scent somewhere in my nostrils. I bolt upright when I hear rustling from the bed, and I peer over the edge of it to where Chris is beginning to stir, long hair wild and frayed.

**Chris:**

Milk. And fruit. Coconut. Air. A breeze. Soft, soft breeze. It's a gentler lull into consciousness than I'm used to, no startled tempest and toss-about, no horses, no teeth. The pillow is soft and distinctly not mine, light blue in color, with a border of white flowers. But they smell good, and I almost lapse back under before I realize I'm alone. Rising up to my elbows, I feel the stinging pull of the scrape on my arm, sharp enough to tighten my vision as I blink around at this bed that isn't mine either. I rub my face and then roll to the side.

"Babe?" My voice is a gravel rasp, sleepy and thick. He was with me, I know he was. I couldn't have dreamt him. My dreams aren't nearly so nice.

A small whisper comes from the end of the bed. "Here."

I sit up, my shirt bunched halfway up my stomach, the sheets mussed around my waist, and his eyes dart down to my navel, linger there. He's crouched on the floor, his face like a pale, sliver of moon, hair like gilded coils. I tug my shirt down, my skin jumping under my own touch.

"What are you doing down there? Are you—?" And then it hits me, that I did something to him. Bones and veins and cut-off screams pop into my head and I feel all the blood drain from my face. I barely manage the words. "I didn't...I didn't hurt you, did I?"

He rises to his knees fast, brows scrunched in worry and disbelief. "No! Chris...no. You d-didn't." My relief is so staggering that tears actually gather in my eyes and my face begins to crumble. He scrambles onto the bed and throws himself into my arms. His weight tosses us against the pillows and then our lips are fused together, his kisses urgent like he's determined for me to know something.

"I'm shy," he hurries to say. "I w-w-was just…sssshy." A quick sniff, angry eye roll. "It's not eh-eh-everyday I have a boy in my bed." He tightens his jaw in that way that I know means he's self-hating and I grasp his head in both hands to make him focus.

"I don't want it to happen with you," I whisper, breath hitching. "Not with you. Not with anyone. But least of all you. I don't want to hurt you. Okay? I couldn't... _bear it_ , if I hurt you."

Lying half-on me, he inches his head back, eyes narrowing. "Why wu-wu-wu—." He breaks off and sighs, cheeks burning red. " _Why would…_ you hurt me?" Fingers in my hair, pink lips parted, lashes curled to the sky, he's the prettiest and I sigh because having him this close to me hurts in the best, most alluring way possible. It makes my stomach clench in that way seconds before I pass out from one of my more terrible benders, when I feel least in control, when the floor rushes up at me and I wake up with wondering if I’m even part of the same century anymore.

I sit up and he moves with me, sticking close, his long legs curling up to his chest, learning into me. His brows twitch with worry.

In my gut the words bubble hotly in an ugly stew, but I lick my lips and take a deep breath. “I have something to tell you.”

He nods and takes my hand, his fingers twisting with mine. “Y-yes?”

I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to feel the words slipping out, words I’ve tried my very best not to think about ever since waking on that floor to my mother’s shouts and Frank’s pulp-red face, her pained whispers later on, talking on the phone with my dad, me sitting just out of sight at the top of the stairs. 

“I…did something. Not too long ago.” My voice is hollow, inflection-less. Staring down at the coverlet helps, but his scent is everywhere. Coconut milk. “At least, I’ve been told that I’ve done something. I have no memory of it.” I shake my head, teeth grinding as I grit my jaw. But then his hand is on my chin, drawing me to face him, and his eyes are soft with kindness.

“It’s okay,” he exhales and bites his lip, still a little swollen from me. “Won’t you tell me?” Much slower, less natural, but clear. He’s trying not to stutter and my heart squeezes.

I meet his gaze and butt my forehead on his shoulder. “Okay, babe.” Briefly, I explain about Frank, how he moved in with us and became a permanent fixture in our home. How I was jealous of all the time my mom began spending with him. How I couldn’t help but feel that he fell short of feeling like a real father figure. “I didn’t really understand why she left my dad to begin with, so when it was only me and her for all those years—it just felt unsettling when there was all of a sudden a man in my life that wasn’t my father.”

“You didn’t kee-kee-keep up a rrrr-relationship with him?”

I shrug, my old anger stoking to a raw burn. “We lived so far, and I was in school. We spoke on the phone, exchanged some emails. But that was about it. Once my insomnia set in, I was so quietly desperate I didn’t give him much thought. It just got so out of control so fast. It disturbed me how quickly I found it routine to see the hours tick by without sleep. Noticing the signs. Fuzzy brain. Shifting sight. Sluggish cement in my head. Legs so heavy. The shakes.” I sniff out a quick laugh. “Fuck. Those are the worst.”

“You do tremble…sometimes.”

I shake my head and hurry to my feet, the ghost-feel of his hands fading from the skin. Sleep is still heavy on my brain, but I grit my jaw and step up to his window, surprised by how dark it is outside.

Turning, I squat at his feet.

“I hurt someone, babe.”

He goes still, eyes dropping down to my lips where the words have slipped free so easily. Perhaps he’s wondering how my mouth works when his doesn’t sometimes, or perhaps he’s wondering if he should run. Before he can say anything, I plow ahead. “It was my mom’s boyfriend. Frank. We’d gotten along just fine, a bit distant, careful with each other’s spaces, you know. They’ve been together for a long while. I let them be, for the most part. We had dinner together and he tried to do some father things with me, which I was _not_ having. I shot up six inches, gained most of my muscle, and a new kind of silence grew between us.” I swallow, afraid to look up at him. “I hadn’t slept in almost forty hours. I was agitated, the shakes set in deep, my vision blurry. I don’t remember going downstairs. I like to stay close to my room because when I’m ready to sleep I usually drop where I stand. But next thing I know I’m waking up on the floor of the living room, Frank and my mom in the kitchen. She’s screaming, cradling him like some kind of infant. I must have been unconscious a minute or two. Because it wasn’t enough. My head was pounding, I caught sharp glimpses of things, like a vortex almost. Her screams, her shouts, I can still hear them sometimes. Make me wince.”

“What happened to him?” he says softly, smoothly, so lost in my story that his tongue forgets to slip. I appreciate that he didn’t ask _what did you do to him_.

“I…well, I broke his arm. It had snapped right in two. I don’t remember it,” I gasp as both of his hands cup my face, a gentle stroke of thumb, such pretty eyes.

“My sweetheart,” he breathes and my face crumbles as he pulls me to his chest and hugs me tight. I cling to him, arms around his tiny waist, engulfing, holding myself to him to hear his heart, feel it beat, count the pulses that keep him living, unharmed. When he speaks his voice is measured in that sweet way of his. “You didn’t mean to do it.”

“No!” His shirt absorbs my sob. “I didn’t. Frank’s been good to me. I don’t want him as my dad. But he’s been good. He didn’t deserve it.” I sniff and clench my eyes shut. “Now my mom doesn’t trust me. You should have seen her face, babe. She was terrified of me. She didn’t want me there anymore.”

His hug tightens. “Shh, sweetheart. There now. Please d-don’t cry.”

All these months of trying to tamp down my sense of growing rage and exhaustion, feeling like a damn tether ball, tossed from one place to the other, unsettled and uneasy. I was so tired of it, of everything. Tom combs his fingers through my hair, my scalp tingling under his touch and I gush out a shaky breath, my mind feeling the calmest in days.

“But…maybe the feelings you have about your real dad burrowed deep into you, so that they went everywhere you went. M-maybe you didn’t reee-alize…that you were so hurt by them. They came out in this way.”

I shake my head because I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll get more psychoanalytical bullshit from the counselor I’m slotted to see once school starts, but what Tom says rings with a truth I feel I’ve been denying myself. My feelings about my dad have never felt resolved, and the distance put between us by moving away when I was twelve only served to carve a deeper hole in my chest that I didn’t know how to fill. Sleep betrays me, dreams disturbs me, and the sky sometimes laughs down at me. With any other person, I might have sniffed and gritted my tears away but they fall easily in front of Tom. He leans forward and kisses my cheeks, my tears blooming under his lips like flowers, spotting his lips with wet.

“This is why you ask me if you’ve hu-hu-hurt me.”

I glance away, my lashes curved heavily. “Yeah,” I rasp.

“But there’s something more, I think. About why you hurt him.”

“My dad,” I whisper, and he nods. I nod too. “It’s too much to think about sometimes. Especially when I’m tired. Which is all the time.” I flick my eyes at the bed. “Thank you for letting me sleep here. I came here without thinking. I’m sorry.”

He smiles, wide and lovely, and I notice one of his bottom teeth is the tiniest bit crooked. “Don’t be. I’m so ha-happy you c-c-came to me.”

“Is your mom here?”

He hums, yes.

“Should I go?”

No, he murmurs, drawing me to him. She’s exhausted, will be in the bath, he assures, go right to sleep, he says. Stay.

And I duck my chin to kiss him flat to the bed, knowing just how she feels.

**

With that little lisp, the stumbled words, he thanks me for telling him about what happened with Frank and my mom. I keep searching for signs that he’s withdrawing from me, too polite to outright run away, but it’s with relief that I find none. We lie back on his pillows, late evening darkening the room to only silhouetted grays and the dotted shine of our eyes, blinking at one another. He hums quietly and plays with my hair and just like that, a wave of drowsiness sweeps through me. It’s amazing to me that I’ve felt the urge to sleep so often when I’m with him, becoming stronger the more I’ve gotten to know him. If I was a different boy with a different life and less complicated sanity problems, I might question the importance of hanging out with someone who puts me to sleep. But because I’m me and sleep is a strange concept and he’s him and made of fruit and earth, it tells me more about his character and how comfortable and safe he makes me feel than anything else.

Even though it’s a load off my chest finally coming clean about the truth of why I’m back with my dad, I’m hesitant with him, wondering if anything’s shifted between us, if I can still be with him like before. But all doubt is wiped from my mind when he crawls over me and straddles my waist, dropping low to kiss my mouth. My groin immediately stirs, heat rolling into my core, pooling there and making him smile when he feels me thickening.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, propping both hands on my chest and rocking his hips, my erection trapped between his legs, snug against his balls. We’ve dry fucked like this before, gaining an idea of the other’s weight and size, liking to pretend at sex until we finally can, but I’m overcome with the need to see him.

He gasps when I gain leverage under him, flipping us so that he’s on his back and I crowd in over him. But he’s grinning and whispering, both of us aware of his mother in the other room. Our lips bump in silent laughter, my splayed hands inching spreading down his torso, fingers at the waistband of his shorts. Lifting his head, he watches me tug his briefs down, more milk-white skin exposed with the darker core of his groin and pubic hair. The light is murky and I can’t see him as clearly as I’d hoped, but it’s enough for now.

“Will you be very quiet, babe?” I whisper in his ear and feel him shudder.

Nodding eagerly, he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and holds it there, my crotch squeezing painfully at the sight. When I duck my head to his core, his cock bobs up at me and taps my nose. Another inch to the right and I would be eyeless. We burst into muted giggles, Tom clapping his hands over his mouth to keep quiet. But I take hold of him at the base, liking how long he is, the soft and distinct round balls of his sac. I want them in my mouth. I want to suck on every inch of him.

The swollen tip burns warmly on my lips, the scent bitter like my own, musky. He’s gone deathly still, waiting as I breathe on him, long fingers wrapped under his nose. Meeting his eyes in the half-light, I smile and open my mouth. It’s a sudden taste, full and like wheat, his cock something alive on my tongue. I moan and his lashes flutter closed, hips vibrating, trying not to thrust. On either side of my shoulders, his legs have opened and hug me sweetly, thin thighs trembling. His white-socked feet toe nervously at my waist but he’s rocking against me and my saliva is gathering and I’m slipping a little further down, my tongue a writhing muscle at his shaft.

“Chris,” he breathes, hands slipping low before clapping higher once more, eyes squeezed shut. I moan again and hitch my hands under both thighs and around to his hips, holding and undulating him to me, helping him move, dragging him closer. Beneath my chin his balls squirm around, shifting and throbbing. Popping off his cock, I let it flop against my face and mouth at his sac, soft curls tickling me, his scent stronger at the root, making my cock ache. It strains inside my shorts, tucked against me angrily, but I ignore it and lick at the bulbous curves of him, the straight and solid shaft, back at the tip to suck eagerly. Head bobbing, I try for deeper but can’t make it past the warning flutter of my throat. I want more practice, want to live here and keep him floating but his hands are suddenly in my hair and he’s inhaling sharply, neck arched as he jabs his hips up and makes me choke. The pulses shoot fast and thick and I’m swallowing on instinct. Bitter almond. Fingers clenched, he holds me to him and I struggle to breathe out my nose, stomach threatening to seize, gasping short bursts of air, but I’m awestruck by him. Long neck exposed, head thrown back, that deep voice of his stifled by caution, I’m so in love.

I close my eyes and hold my breath, counting the beats of my heart in my ear and desiring that this form of unconsciousness would take me rather than that other, terrifying, ugly kind. But he flutters back to life and lifts his head with a surprised sound. His hands fly loose of my hair and I’m lifting off him, dragging in air.

“Shit!” he whispers and scrambles up, but I’m lightheaded and desperate and I clasp his wrist, bringing his hand to my crotch. It closes around the bulge in my shorts, balls and dick swollen and ready to burst, which I do. With one small touch he brings me to the brink of a blinding precipice. Practically tackling him to the bed, I thrust against his hand, his other one flat against my mouth to keep my moan quiet. I buck and engulf him, shooting my load for what seems like eternity until finally I blink and rouse from that chasm. I’ve sandwiched him flat, both of us shaking, both of us leaking and sticky, a big pool of cum dripping out of the leg of my shorts and onto his sheets.

“Are you okay?” My voice is shot, thick with phlegm, sore from him. But he nods and is smiling, big and crinkly-eyed. I want him etched into my brain forever.

Loose and less-anxious, we squeeze in together under the blanket, pillows walling us in, a little fort that smells of sex and coconut milk. He kisses me with open curiosity, drawing back to taste himself on my tongue. Blinking, one hand wrapped around the back of my head, he meets my eyes and smiles, pulling me forward for more, deeper kisses. I guess he likes what’s lingering on my lips.

I suddenly can’t wait for so many things. To shower with him for the first time, for him to graduate and go to college with me, to feel his flesh give around me as I push in and die. But his long, slender hands anchor me to the now, cupping my face, threading through my hair, sweat-scorched. Bumping noses in a quiet goodnight, he wraps himself around me, making himself at home against my chest, and sighs. He’s naked from the waist down and we’re at ease, because tomorrow and the next day, and the next, I’ll memorize him one freckle and curve at a time.

I smile at the thought, not realizing, even as I follow him into that void and slip so easily into sleep, the wave of drowsiness that comes from contentment and happiness, as if shared from his body to mine.

**Tom:**

I can feel his mouth on me for days. Like a phantom limb, the tingling will appear at the oddest moments, in the shower, riding on my board, setting the table for dinner. Warm, hot suction and I’m suddenly hard, tripping to my room for a quick stroke and stifled groan. An insistent, demanding tug has taken residence in my belly, a magnetic pull toward him, eased only once I’m able to brush a finger or a knuckle or an elbow on him. I’m fascinated and in love, discovering in him so much of what makes me tick, how easily he listens, how patient despite his own pain.

I knew that he had to have been keeping something hidden about why he moved back, remembering him whispering in his sleep about his mom and bones breaking. How sorry he was. And I know he is. Remorse lies heavy on that sweet boy, with his downturned puppy eyes and sinner’s mouth, and I think after a few times testing it out we’ve discovered there might be a turn to the tide. So much of his discomfort and sense of broken self has to do with how much sleep he gets, which isn’t much. His stamina for staying awake is astounding, able to remain coherent far longer than I would have been able to, even if his concentration begins to lag and his eyes to throb and his hands to shake when he reaches those thirty plus hours. But now that he’s opened up to me there’s an ease with which he breathes, face collapsing into quicker, bigger smiles, his eyes crinkling as he reaches to boost me up into the tree branch. He still won’t climb up to the top with me, eyeing the canopies with suspicion or distrust, but I don’t pressure him. I climb up on my own and make my jewelry as I sing quietly, knowing he’s circling the bottom like a faithful wolf, listening to me. When I’m done he selects his favorite piece and secures it around his wrist or neck and then comes with me to bury the rest. My graveyard is growing, but I feel good knowing there are bits of me in the earth, burrowed in time like pearls in the sea.

It’s unspoken between us, our sleeping arrangements. Never having slept next to someone before it takes me a few tries to fully relax around him. At first, I could only lie there with him, our hands clasped under the sheets, shifting our heads from side to side, looking at each other one moment, the ceiling the next, again and again. But he doesn’t fall under, not like I do. Eventually, my brain will shut off and I’ll slip into that peaceful dark just as easily as closing my eyes, but he’ll stay awake, blinking, mind whirring. Sometimes I veer into bleary consciousness, see he’s found my laptop and is fiddling on some website about surveys. Nestling my head into his waist, I sigh and watch for a short while before falling asleep again, his long arm stretched along my back, hand soothing my tailbone. In the mornings we’ll get up and head out, to the beach or the mall, to the forest or the cliffs, me feeling rejuvenated, him feeling depleted. 

But it was worse some nights, when he strayed so close to some invisible edge in his mind that he bordered on volatile, mirroring his reaction from that morning he knocked on my window. It’s always focused on some inner part of his person, this loathing, this frustration of self, and it makes me hurt how much we are alike in that regard. With my mom working two jobs she’s home some evenings, gone the rest. But we stick to my room, playing video games or on the computer. We’ll watch movies and listen to music, and as it gets later we curl up on my bed and kiss. Eventually I’ll sleep and he won’t, not always. I’ve been wanting to ask him about sleep medication, if he’s tried it, if he thinks it’ll work for him. He’s mentioned the counselor he’ll start seeing once classes begin, and I hope it goes well for him, that this person can help him feel better and not discount his emotions and physical lack of sleep as something inconsequential or easily fixed. I want him happy.

Three times more in the nights following the first he texted me, asking if I was awake. Words jumbled and misspelled, as if autocorrect couldn’t catch up with him in his hurry to hit send, he’d been agitated and distraught. I had no hesitation to invite him over to try and rest. It’s always in the early hours of dawn when I let him into my room, his trembling and stumbled words offsetting his usual quiet, confident strength. What he kept in check during the day, for the most part, unraveled by the thread come dark, when the urge to sleep hit him full force even if his mind fought such a basic instinct. Bewildered and staggering he would crawl in through my window with glazed eyes and bitten lips, wildly afraid and seeking my scent. It was those days that he slept that hardest, the longest, wrapped like a cocoon in my bed. Hours would pass, the light changing and lengthening and finally dimming to dark on the walls. I would check on him, feel his pulse, smooth back his hair, but he wouldn’t stir, so far down into that river of sleep that I had a slight fear he wouldn’t ever resurface.

I never could have imagined my bed would become the refuge to the very boy seen by others as someone hardened and unapproachable, his tattoos and long hair and tangled spun jewelry giving him an air of quiet malice not helped by his reclusion and silent, sometimes frosty demeanor. I’m surprised that the part inside me that feels wholly his doesn’t light me up in a dark room, it feels that glowingly bright. And that he’s mine…well, I’ve never felt so privileged.

Peacefully, I sing to him. Quietly and low. Because the moments he’s lying in bed scrunching his face to my pillow, tears leaking from his lashes, despairing for sleep and I feel at my most helpless, are the moments that propel me to use my voice. Eyes swollen, he’ll look at me and I wonder if he can’t see, blue irises zipping and hazed in all his panic. I wrap him close, having found that bunching him to me with blankets and sheets is how he’ll stay the stillest. I’ll rock him like a little boy, his exhausted moans washing over my throat. I’ll sing and sway him, hugging him and smoothing his hair. Until he slowly drops off, body going slack and heavy, giving in finally. I’ll sleep too, if at night, learning to shape myself around him. Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, roll to my side, flop to my back, he’s always there, legs twisted with mine, lips not far from my own. If during the day, I’ll carefully disentangle myself and eat or shower or read my books. My anxiety spikes a little if he stays in one position for too long, my chest tight until he shifts about, still with me.

But eventually he wakes, with adorable owl blinks and mussed hair, murmuring my name and reaching blindly. And how we will kiss, there on my bed, my door locked and my window shuttered, small haven for our discoveries of tickle-spots and giggle-curves, his lips on my skin something I can’t believe I ever lived without. He’ll slip into my bathroom to shower, using my toothbrush and rubbing my lotion on his neck and chest. Mirror fogged, moisture beaded and sweating down the slick glass, I’ll walk in on him and hug him from behind because my heart has never felt so full. Pressed there with my cheek to his shoulder, I get the solid sense of home.

We speak quietly to each other, my stuttering not feeling so much like a stabbing knife in my heart, my comfort around him rising until I’m uttering more words than I have all year.

“I really, really think it’s you,” he says one night. He’s not as distressed as before, but he’s getting there. I can tell by how much he’s rubbing his eyes. “Because I’ll be in my room and I can’t do it. I can’t fall asleep. But here? It’s much easier.”

We keep track of his sleeping hours in the new planner I got him one time I went on a solo trip to the store. And as a week passes, and then two, and then three, we are slightly discouraged to see nothing has fluctuated much.

“But I’m feeling so much better,” he says with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Like I’m getting more rest. How’s that possible?”

It’s true that he’s looking better, healthier. His color is returning, and the bruises under his eyes, while still present, aren’t nearly as dark. I’m suddenly struck with a memory of the first time he slept with me, all of his murmuring and faint whispers. He doesn’t talk so much in his sleep anymore.

“You…aren’t d-d-dreaming,” I whisper, closing my eyes at my failure.

 He blinks and looks down, considering. “You know. You’re right. I’m not.”

“What were your dreams about?”                                                                                                                

“Dark things. Dark waters. Horses. Horses and their teeth.” He shrugs, eyes slipping to rest on my hip. I see the way they shift lower. He’s thinking along the same lines I am, and I’m suddenly desperate for more time with him. Summer is dwindling to a close; school will start soon for the both of us. He has planned to shop for supplies and text books one of these days, and when he asked if I would come with him, I said yes. “If you promise to come with me to the store for my things,” and he said, with a tender thick blink, “Of course I will.”

I love the idea of doing small chores like this with him, in public, normal. He holds my hand and thinks nothing of it, and I can begin to see how it will be with us when we’re a little older.

But right now he’s fixated on my thigh, running a hand around the back of it and pulling me closer. Even though it’s been a few weeks since he gave me a blow job, and we sleep beside each other almost every night, we haven’t gone further than that since. We touch and grab, hump and kiss, bringing us to spiraling orgasms all times of day. When I used to masturbate before I met him, my climaxes felt good but didn’t feel as strong as when he gives me one. Those ice-blue eyes staring into mine, his hand working hard between my legs, his other arm wrapped around behind to anchor me down. I’m breathless and at his mercy, finding that to release under his care and attention is to ascend to the very sky, cast adrift with the stars until his sleepy kisses bring me back down.

“Babe,” he murmurs, voice so deep it goes nowhere but on me, in me. Climbing on top, he sucks at my neck and my legs fall open, chills running down my spine. He’s started to leave tiny bruises on me, suckled kisses that turn purple, strings of them that I like to pinch. But he keeps them fresh, too, paying careful worship with his lips and teeth and tongue. He drags his mouth to each nipple and I buck into him with a small cry. He smiles and hums and gives another hard suck, a shot of light straight to my groin. My shorts and underwear are around my knees in one quick swipe and then he’s burying his face into my crotch and moaning. Cheeks red, hands in his hair, I whimper as he sniffs around the root of me, staring up at me, crystal gaze and palm fronds, and I think of the lyric _I couldn’t hide from those eyes._

Coming in his mouth made me nervous at first. I wasn’t sure if the taste or texture would be gross to him. But he’s on me like a man quenching a terrible thirst and even as my hips start jumping up and his name tumbles from my mouth like a litany, he doesn’t pull off. He hooks his big hands over my waist and pushes as much of me into his mouth and sits there, swallowing.

Those tiny muscles fluttering drag me over the edge and I’m twisting my fingers on his scalp and coming, hard. He’s lying between my legs, head pressed comfortably to the crook of my leg, only an inch from where my cock is still twitching. He’s watching it, blinking slowly, at such sweet ease.

“I want to taste you now,” I say and he lifts his gaze.

“Babe, you don’t—.”

But I sit up and he scoots back, eyes flicking over my naked legs, like this might happen. Something shifts behind his eyes and then he’s nodding. “Okay, babe. Want me to lie down?”

I take his wrist and pull him to his feet, crawling off the bed after him, a satisfying curl of pleasure ribboning in my chest that I’m half naked with this boy and no one else could claim that. I drop to my knees and he inhales sharply, eyes wide. Like I suspected, he’s rigidly hard in his basketball shorts, the tent impressive, and I’m quick to pull them down. I’ve felt him dozens of times, know him by shape and weight, but seeing him for the first time steals all my words – no matter how broken they are. He’s _heavy_ , his sac hanging low between his legs. Not as long as me, he is definitely thicker, more veined, and a little hairier. I’m already licking my lips imagining how I’ll fit him inside. 

A hand cups my cheek, a soft caress. “Have you ever…before?”

I shake my head no, feeling my cock start to stir.

Sometimes I’m embarrassed by my own scent, rising from my lap when I sit or sticking to the edges of my fingers after I’ve touched myself in the dark. There’s something earthy about it, this musk, so like wet sand and crushed flowers, wheat and stalk and blade of grass. He smells just like me, I find, nosing my way to the furred root of his erection. His fingers tighten in my hair, igniting a buzz along my skin.

“I might not last,” he says quickly. “Seeing you down there, on your knees, I’m—.” He cuts off and gulps.  But I grin and take hold, nudging the tip of my nose under the tip of his cock. It’s radiating heat, moist and straining, and closing my lips around it reminds me of the lollipops I used to love sucking on as a little boy. My mouth waters and I slide down a quick inch, reminding myself to find a Blow Pop soon and tease him with it. Lips stretched wide, I blink up at him and he visibly shudders, hair hanging in pointed sheets around his face. Both hands creep around my head and grip gently, toes curling in the carpet, angling his hips toward me. It’s not nearly as daunting as I thought it would be. He’s big – very – but I like the taste of his trembling, the rapturous stare, the sense of worship even though I’m the one kneeling.

I’m longer than him, and I wonder if I can take him a little deeper than he could take me. Inching closer, I widen my jaw and feel the bumped ridge of veins and gathered skin under my lips, along my flattened tongue. Scent rising, fingers tightening, he takes another small step toward me and he’s suddenly at the back of my throat. I squeak and grip his thighs, hair feeling soft under my palms.

“Yeah,” he breathes and nudges my throat again so that I moan and blink slow. The dark smears of his tattoos blip in the corner of my eye, edge-frayed roses and the tangle of spit-fire night webs. Sitting back on my heels, I move as he advances, the frame of the bed like a bite of cold on my tailbone. My blood starts pumping faster for all his aggression, my heart throbbing at how much he’s trying to hold back. Widening his legs, he stands over me so that I’m pressed to the bed, rolling his hips and sliding his cock in and out of my mouth. It’s slick with my saliva, the surface shining in the corner of my eye as I look up at him. “Touch my balls,” he whispers and my own limp cock bobs with interest at the rasp. Slipping my hand under his sac, I cradle and squeeze it, my fingers reaching further in and rubbing the spongy swell between his legs. His head falls back, long throat exposed as he breathes out a groaned _fuck_ and then grips my hair and thrusts forward to spill into my mouth.

I'm surprised at the taste, smoky and bitter, a salty burst. But I swallow reflexively, feeling him settle in my belly. His legs are trembling, perched up on his tiptoes, holding me to him still. I take short, shallow breaths through my nose, but he’s curled up against my throat and I almost can’t breathe at all. When he blinks it’s like watching a fogged glass clear. Dark pupils zoom in on me and then he’s scrambling back and dropping to his knees, lips hard on mine. Our tongues bump and twine, and I moan, remembering when I used to practice kissing my pillow late at night, always too soft for what I imagined another man’s mouth to be.

Hands bracketing my face, he asks, “Shit, did you hate it?”

“What? No!” My voice is garbled, watery, and I clear my throat quickly, shyly, as his jaw tightens and he shifts a knee behind me to cradle me to his chest.

“Then I was too rough.” Eyes zipping down my body, it’s like he’s searching for a reason something went wrong. I nudge his jaw with my forehead, arms around his waist, and give him a good squeeze. I take a deep breath to concentrate.

“I liked it. And I w-w-would like…to do it again. It was new. And different. But it’s what I’ve always wanted to do with a man.”

His eyes are tender, cupping my cheek. “Babe…should I—?”

“Yes,” I blurt out and he grins.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

I shrug, because I can kind of guess. But when he remains silent, a small smile tugging at his lips, I try to ease my words into an easy ribbon. “You should buy what we need…I think.”

His eyes shine with mirth. “And what do we need?”

My cheeks burn and I drop my eyes, his name coming out like a whine. “Chris…”

But he saves me and kisses first one cheek and then the other. “Lube and condoms?”

I meet his gaze, and nod.

“You’re so sweet,” he whispers, rasping a thumb on my brow. “So sweet.” There are darkening bruises under his bottom lashes and I know he’s approaching that place when no sleep will mean static in his head and fuzzy vision.

“Let’s sleep. Me and you.”

“Just sleep?”

I pinch his earlobe. “ _Yes._ For now.”

He shifts his gaze to the door. “Has your mom asked you anything?” My brows bunch and I tap a finger on his chest. He nods. “About us. Yeah.”

I shake my head. I can smell us in the air, our cocks limp and drying on our laps, my legs curled up against him, his spread out on the floor. I love how small he makes me feel, how wonderful it is to be held. She hasn’t asked me a thing about what I’ve been doing all summer, how I pass my time. It was only once that she mentioned I was spending lots of time out of the house, the implication that I might have made a few new friends, the unspoken request to tell her a little about them. But how to explain this that I can’t find the words for, much less do them justice with my stubborn mouth?

“Just you,” I say, grazing his stubble with the tips of my fingers. He looks confused but doesn’t press me to explain, instead kisses my cheek again with a big inhale, as if wanting to bottle up my scent in his lungs, for safekeeping. We tumble back on the bed, completely naked, my eyes raking down his chest where the dark markings of his tattoo curve past his clavicle, around his pectoral and up to his shoulder again, leaves and rose buds and flames of wind.

“They are flowers,” I say, the full tattoo taking shape.

Watching my finger trace a giant red bloom, he shrugs modestly. “I wanted it to be like a jungle, keeping me here, rooted.”

“But…w-wh-where would you go? Otherwise?”

“I don’t know. The sky, maybe. Up near the moon. To burn on the sun.”

“No,” I whisper, rubbing my lips on a long clavicle. “You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Leave? Me?”

He sucks in a startled breath, hands back on each of my temples, that gesture that I find myself missing at odd times of the day, when I feel an urge for safety and comfort. I can almost imagine the dopamine flooding my bloodstream at his touch, elusive drug to remind me of what he means and all that I feel for him.

“I wouldn’t,” he insists quietly, urgently, and even as tears make my vision swim I’m nodding because I believe him, because ever since hearing his voice for the first time I began to understand what it means to have a friend, a real one.

He curls me into his chest, trapped in his arms, and we breathe and we smile and even for a short, quick moment we laugh together, content with our plans to love and accept each other with all our shortcomings and oddities.

**Chris:**

I shop for what we need the very next day. Tom wanted to come too, and it’s with a defiant long-stride that we enter the 24-hour convenience store at nearly midnight. Even through his many yawns, there’s a contagious excitement about him, a giddiness that comforts me. He wants this as much as I do.

We walk together down the street, the orbs of light from the traffic posts blinking on and off, casting us in alternating spots of color. We head through the parking lot, his hand clenched nervously in mine. He keeps darting his gaze around, as if expecting someone to jump out of nowhere and attack us for being so homo but there aren’t many others out, just a couple of homeless men pushing shopping carts filled with aluminum cans and plastic bags. There’s no way I’d let someone hurt him.

The store’s fluorescent lights are searing after the near black of the night sky, and we blink around before finding our bearings. Hand in mine, his other around my elbow, Tom follows my steps tightly. Keeping his gaze low, he peeks under his lashes into every aisle, but I lead the way confidently because I know where they keep this sort of stuff. Once we’re standing before the shelves, his eyes go wide and his lips fall open. I can’t help but throw an arm around him because he’s so cute.

“Which ones?”

There are so many kinds and flavors, I’m at a loss myself. I grab at a bottle of clear lube, scentless and flavorless, and he nods quickly. But when I turn to the boxes of condoms, Tom clutches my wrist. I turn to him, surprised.

He swallows and looks to gather his words. “I just…I d-d-don’t—.” He breaks off and clenches his jaw. “Are you a virgin?”

The words are fast, but he looks quietly triumphant, as if his plan to spit the words out tricks his mouth into forgetting to stumble.

“Yeah, babe. I am.”

“M-mmme too,” he says, flushed.

I can tell where he’s going. “You don’t want to use condoms.”

He shakes his head, and gives my fingers a squeeze. I glance back at all the boxes on the shelves and feel a small measure of relief—not that I get to be inside him without a barrier, although just the thought gets my blood pumping, but that I really have no clue how to begin picking the right ones. 

“Okay, babe. We won’t. I haven’t done anything with anyone. And you haven’t either.” He gives another adorable head shake, eyes soft on my lips. I grab another bottle of lube and then lead us out of the aisle, his giddy laugh making me grin. I pay and then stuff the crumpled plastic bag into my back pocket. Outside the parking lot is sparse and shrouded in darkness, the stars dotting the sky like sprinkled sugar powder. Tom skips along beside me, his face split in two with one of the widest smiles I’ve seen on him all summer, and when he starts running I run with him, our hands clasped and rocking forward and back between us. We pant out excited whoops of laughter, finding our way home faster than it took us to leave it. Only, we pause now on the street to catch our breaths, his cheeks red even in the moonlight. He reaches for me quickly, one long arm around the back of my neck to drag me closer, our mouths meeting in a hard thump, but I groan and grab him up, lifting him against me to deepen our kiss. In my back pocket, the bottles of lube almost vibrate as I spin him in a half-circle. He squeals and I growl out a sharp laugh, not caring who might look out their bedroom windows and see our entangled shadows.

They can think we’re ghosts for all I care. They can think we are nothing, if it means we are left alone, if it means I get to keep him.

**

He keeps one bottle of lube at his house and I keep one at mine. Even though we don’t spend nearly so much time in my bedroom we want to be prepared for the time we can finally take that step. In the meantime, I’m keeping track of my sleeping hours in the new agenda Tom got for me. It’s been six weeks since we met, four since I started sleeping in his room. It’s pretty much a constant thing now. I hang out in my room until it’s past the hour that mostly everyone has gone to sleep, including him. With the hopes that I might be able to conk out on my own, I do my surveys and read from the books I’ve borrowed from him, but eventually I’ll start to feel the buzz behind my eyeballs and I know it’s begun. Sometimes it’s nighttime and sometimes it’s daytime, but I always go to him. I’m not sure if it’s what I hope my brain is beginning to recognize as an absolute routine for sleep but I certainly don’t want to disturb the wiring in my brain if it means I might be developing a healthy resting habit.

I worried before that I was a bother to him, but he seems to like me being there in bed with him as much as I do. He clings to me in his sleep, sometimes murmuring my name, his face tucked into my neck. It’s like he’s used to holding something at night, and I’m beyond pleased that I seem to have been promoted to favorite holding object. I wonder what he gets up to while I sleep during the day and his mother is gone. Does he stay in the room with me, reading his books or playing his video games? Does he go to the woods, to his jewelry? Does he sing softly to himself, do his lisped song-words make their way into my dreams? Removing the horrid horses and their chomping teeth? I haven’t had a bad dream in a long while, and even though I hesitate to believe in fate and all that, I can’t help but believe that he’s good for me, that he’s helped me, that I’ve begun to heal.

I hope it’s not a fluke, not life playing another trick on me.

I worry about when school starts for the both of us, what I’ll do without him, what he’ll do if he needs me. Our cell phones are a great source of comfort, knowing I can contact him whenever. But after spending every minute with each other for most of the summer, I’m not sure I won’t have separation anxiety. As it is, little reminders of the upcoming shift that will happen in the fall keep encroaching into the comfort zone in my head.

With my checks from the survey companies, a letter arrives in the mail from the university. I’d applied to a hundred job postings, including an art gallery located in the student union. The curator, someone named Abigail Stoneheart, had written to me asking to set up a time for a formal interview. It sounds promising, and I can only hope that she doesn’t live up to her name.

“Are you nervous?” Tom asks me one evening we’re lounging out on the beach. He’s brought down his ball of twine from the cubbyhole in the tree and is twisting two strips together, threading in beads of silver. It’s really pretty and I plan on snagging it once he’s done.

“Nah. Nothing to it. She’ll ask me questions, I’ll answer them. I’ll either get it, or I won’t.”

His legs are crossed in the sand, and he’s hunched over his craft, so when he speaks I almost don’t hear him. “I wish it were that easy for me.”

The tips of my ears burn with shame.

“Babe.” I scoot closer, blocking the ocean spray from catching in his curls. He squints up at me and then drops his eyes quickly. But I stick a finger under his chin and gently guide his face back up. His cheeks are pink, from embarrassment or the heat maybe, but he’s so beautiful it’s almost painful to me. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say."

"No—," he starts, but I shake my head.

"It was. It was insensitive."

He drops the bracelet he's working on and takes my hands, blinking down at our knuckles for a moment while he convinces his tongue to work. "I c-c-can't speak as freely as you do. However much I wish I could. But I express myself in other ways. With my jewelry or with flying.” He laughs quietly. “I feel so free when I'm on my board."

"And when you sing." I cup his cheek and his smile grows big. “I love when you sing. Your voice is so nice.” He shakes his head, but I nod mine faster and he giggles. “It is! I like, especially, when I’m able to hear, even if just barely, when you sing me to sleep. Rocking me like a little boy. Because even if my head feels like a block of cement and I can’t tell if I’m squeezing you too hard, your little lullabies keep me sane.”

His lips purse into a pretty bow, like he’s thinking of words but doesn’t want to try saying them, or maybe, because I feel really good about us and where we are, maybe he feels he doesn’t have to. I kiss his cheek and he turns his face to whisper at neck, my name. We lie back on the sand, the setting sun boiling over the waves, ripping and cresting and blanketing us with warmth. Sand sticks to our legs and elbows, and he stares at me with lashes long and eyes almost lavender in this light. I’m mesmerized, words locked in my throat as he takes my wrist and wraps the bracelet he’s working on around it, measuring it to me.

And I smile, because he always meant it for me. Just the thought is enough to swell the heart in my chest to bursting.

**Tom:**

I keep telling myself that I should take it down a notch with all the thoughts I’m having about sex with my boyfriend. But it’s all I can think about. Whenever I see him, I’m reminded of how heavy he felt on my tongue, how good he smelled, all that weight pushing into me. It’s going to be soon, we can both feel it. He’s been sleeping in my bed most nights, and almost every day. His hours awake are beginning to fluctuate, but I’m taking that as a good sign. His body might be recalibrating, his mind adjusting itself to an internal timer most of us are privileged to have so effortlessly.

I really hope he and I can make him better. I hope for it more than anything. I’ve seen him at his worst, bruised eyes, mumbled and pained moans, shaking because he says it hurts, and I’ve seen him at his best, refreshed and rested, face bright, laughing hungrily, his eyes clear. And when he’s in the in-between, in that foggy land where sticky-palmed hands claw him deeper into the murk that rids him of rest, that’s when I feel the most helpless. Because I know he’s approaching a place I have never been, and all I have to help him is my voice.

I have never been more afraid to let someone down.

But cradling him like now, moist-limbed and a bit sticky with summer sweat, so soundly asleep, I can’t help but know my purpose. Or at least part of it. And it feels wonderful.

My mom left early a short while ago, something about needing to get gas before work, and I take the extra time to lie in bed with Chris, the sun brightening my room with every passing minute. He’s been asleep almost ten hours now. I slept beside him for about eight and now I’m staring at the ceiling as he breathes puffs of air into my neck. If I lie still enough, I can feel the tug of drowsiness that might pull me under with him, and it almost does when I suddenly hear it. My mom’s voice.

“Tom?”

That sickening shroud of horror usually reserved for witnessing car accidents or spilling scalding coffee pulses through me and I’m frozen in panic. She’s back. _Why is she back_?

One of my arms is curled under Chris’s neck, the other tangled in the blankets over us. Our legs are twisted together and he’s half on me. Unless I evaporate into thin air, I can’t move without jostling him.

And I refuse to wake him.

She’s saying something out in the hall, probably thinking that I’ll hear her, but I’m coiled into a tight wire of tension on the bed, roaring static in my ears, hoping, hoping, hoping she doesn’t—.

There’s a brief knock on my door and then it opens. She walks in.

“—anyway, I thought of it just last minute, but—.”

Our eyes meet, hers widening in absolute shock, mine in fear. I can see my room zoom in her eyes, a fish bowl stretch before snapping into focus with me and Chris in dead center, wound together like lovers.

But we aren’t yet. Not yet. Are we?

He’s snoring so quietly, only a purr really, but it means he’s far under getting the rest he needs.

My mom’s mouth falls open and all of my words jam up in my throat. She’s going to speak or shout or do _something_ and it’s going to wake him.

She can’t. She can’t, she can’t.

I throw my hand up and she freezes, mouth snapping shut.

“D-d-d-don’t!” I gasp, holding him to me, all that heavy hot weight, my own skin burning, alarm alighting it with what seems like fire. Sweat dots my brow, slides in one slow, tickling curve down my spine, and I wonder if my mom will love me less. Could she?

She blinks quickly, one small hand rising to her chin, and before I can stammer out another word to explain - however quietly - what she’s seeing, she turns and closes the door behind her.

The silence is like terror, an appalling chill on my skin, and I suddenly start to shake.

This isn’t how I wanted her to find out. I sort of imagined a scenario where I could bring it up to her the next time she asked me about all the time I was spending out of the house, where I might casually say something along the lines of how I’d made a very special friend and he was my boyfriend. I ignore how I don’t stutter in this make believe scene.

I slide my nose into Chris’s hair and inhale his sweet earth-smell, something wispy underneath, like sea foam shampoo. Tears gather under my lashes and my chest constricts with a swelling emotion. I can’t decide if she looked at me like she was merely surprised or if she hated me. To have felt the kind of big love Chris shows me every day and to wonder if my mother no longer has any left for me, is so sobering a thought and comparison that my stomach churns threateningly.

Underneath my pillow my phone buzzes and I give a little jump. Chris moans and shifts his leg higher on me, mumbling something unintelligible.

“Shh,” I whisper, palming his cheek, willing him to stay asleep. He does, going limp on me again, and I search around under the pillow with my free hand. I check my phone screen and see a text message from my mom. That tight squeeze of panic hits me again. Her text is short.

**Mom: I didn’t know.**

I sag against Chris, more tears blinding as a sob wracks through me. Why does her message hurt me so much? Is it because I expect her to just know? To look at me and think, this is my son and he isn’t like others. No, he has the tender capability and careful grace to love other men. And that’s perfectly fine.

Sniffing, I hold my phone behind Chris’s head and type out a response.

**Me: I’m sorry mom. I wanted to tell you another way. His name is Chris.**

**Mom: So you’re…gay?**

**Me: Yes. Does that change anything for you?**

She doesn’t respond for the few minutes I bury my face in Chris’s hair, trying not to shake as I cry. Sleep, please sleep, my sweet love. When my phone finally buzzes, I blink heavily, lashes sticking like wet fronds to my cheeks.

**Mom: No honey. It changes nothing. I’m sorry too. I was just surprised. I’ll talk to you in a bit. At work. Love you.**

More sobs and bubbled vision. Chris squirms against me, rolling onto his back with a sigh. My emotions are so high I can’t help my tiny gasps, relieved when he goes still after a moment.

**Me: I love you too! Thank you mom.**

I drop my phone and snuggle up to Chris’s side. He’ll sleep for a few hours more, waking near noon with puffy eyes and wild hair, asking for water and a dozen kisses. And I’ll give him anything he asks, afraid this is the last time I’ll see him in my bed.

**

She comes back on her lunch break and I’m waiting for her at the door. Chris woke for a brief minute about an hour ago, mumbled my name, and then turned over and fell back asleep. I took the chance to slip away, brush my teeth, and pace nervously in the living room until my mom texted me that she was on her way. I keep trying to think of what to say, but really, would I even be able to articulate what we both needed to know?

When she pushes through the door, I stand there with both hands wrung, face open, expectant.

“Hey,” she says calmly, bolting the lock and dropping her purse on the side table.

“Mom—,” I start but she throws up a hand, much in the same way I silenced her this morning, and quietly says, “Give me a minute.”

Walking into the kitchen she fills a glass of water and drinks it in three quick gulps. I wait by the table.

With one long finger, she points in the direction of my bedroom. “Is he still here?”

I nod.

“Why is he still here?”

“Bec-c-c-cause he’s sleeping.”

“Is he homeless?”

I shake my head hard. _No._

Sighing, she leans a hip against the counter and rubs her eyes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know if you were talking to girls, much less boys. But, I mean, to be honest, I could have sworn you were ten only a few months ago. It’s just…strange. Getting used to it all.”

“Because he’s a b-boy? Or because I’m not a kid anymore?”

She shrugs, huffing out a sharp laugh. “A bit, yeah. Both. But mostly because I’m not used to the thought that you might be physically involved with anyone.”

“I’m almost eighteen, Mom,” I whisper and she waves her hand like yeah, yeah, I know.

“What’s wrong with him?” she says suddenly, and I feel myself bristle. “Why were you so adamant I not wake him?”

I sink down into a chair, clawing a hand through my hair while she waits there against the counter, a pillar of silence. I gather my breath and will my tongue to listen.

“He c-can’t ssssllll—.” I break off, angry tears rising. I try again, harder. “He can’t sleep! He has ihhhhnnn—.” My throat seizes and I fall silent, fuming.

“Insomnia?” she guesses and I breathe out a relieved, “ _Yes._ ”

“So, then, what? He can take medication. Visit therapists. Sleep in his own bed.”

I hurry to my feet and turn away with a frustrated huff. She’s at my side in a second. “Okay, okay. Easy, Tom. I’m just throwing out ideas.”

“Don’t,” I bite out. Her eyes widen fractionally and something good and vibrant sprouts to life in my chest. “We like each other. He’s my boyfriend. And the only person he can physically sleep with is _me_. He can’t do it alone. His mind won’t let him. Mom, I have never felt as seen before in my life until the day he laid eyes on me in the woods. He’s gentle and full of sweet kindness, and rage, and lightning, like every other boy.”

“But not you,” she says softly and I blink down at her, a question. “Not you. You are full of something else entirely, aren’t you? Something molten and pure.” I don’t know what she means exactly, but she nods to herself, curling a hand around my bicep. “Give me some time, Tom. I’m not used to this. Just tell me: are you safe?” I nod after a stretch of silence. “Is he safe?” I nod again, immediately.

“Okay,” she eventually sighs. “Okay, good. That’s all I need to know.” She’s about to turn away when I grab her elbows. She freezes, and waits.

“He _listens_ to me, Mom.” I stare her in the eyes, trying to make her understand. “He listens.” And in the way I hear my own tiny lisp, the curl of my tongue that almost stumbled, but didn’t, I can see that she gets it.

“Chris, was it?” I smile, nodding again. “Alright then. Chris and Tom.”

And the song finishes itself in my head. _Sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G._

**

I can’t wait for him. Not this time. I’m bursting with too much happiness. Once my mom left for work again I grab my board and take off at a careening glide down the street, past the house with the yapping dog that loves only Chris, and straight into the woods. August brought with it dry, heated winds and burning clouds of pollen. I’m thankful not to have any allergies, knowing my mom suffers from them pretty badly, but usually only in the spring. I wonder if Chris is allergic to anything. If I could I would gather up all the things that would harm him and roll them into a giant ball and push them into the ocean. He doesn’t like the ocean. He wouldn’t accidentally run into any in the deep blue, so I figure it’s the safest place to put them. Things like shellfish and oysters already belong there, but I’ll keep from him other things like honeybees and their flowers, and grass and pet dander and food additives. I’d rid the world of them, to keep him for longer.

I’m already imagining a design to weave into my jewelry when I hear someone clear their throat behind me. I spin with a gasp. Standing there is none other than Ryan Andrews.

He’s alone, surprisingly, in khaki shorts and a navy blue button-down, collar flung open, a peek of brown chest hair. I swallow, hating myself for thinking that without all that mocking hate etched onto his face he might actually be attractive. His hands are big, like Chris’s, his legs strong and finely haired, also like Chris’s. The late afternoon sun casts him in a soft glow, dark hair caught up in dark flames. But his eyes are narrowed in possible threat, and my blood zings to attention.

“Hey,” he says, nodding at me. I retreat a step, the giant wall of tree at my back. “How are you?”

It’s an odd thing to ask, and since my mind is running a mile ahead of my mouth and my heart is pounding a wild beat, I stutter out a simple, “Do—good.”

His face splits into a delighted grin. “Man, that shit never gets old.”

Face burning, I drop my eyes.

Behind me is only cliffs and ocean. Ryan stands between me and the way out of the forest. High above is my favorite perching branch, but he would only follow me there and any confrontation would end in my broken death on the spongy ground, not yet eighteen, gone too soon. Chris would be left alone, with no one to rock him to sleep, thinking of only himself to blame.

My grip tightens on my board, and its sturdy weight feels like a club in my hands. Ryan’s gaze flicks down to it, like he knows what I’m thinking, and he smirks again. In one quick move, he launches himself at me and I squeak, too slow to stop his hands from coiling in the collar of my shirt. He smashes me against the tree and my board clatters on the gnarled roots at our feet.

Eyes like slits, teeth bared, his beer breath gusts over my face and I feel myself sicken, cringing away. “I don’t know what it is about you that’s always just infuriated me, Tom-Tom, but it’s starting to annoy the shit out of me.” I thrash against him but he gets a solid grip on me and slams me into the bark again.

“Stop,” I whisper, inaudible. He doesn’t hear me.

“You were always the easiest. The most fun to go after. But I never understood why I couldn’t leave you alone. And I think I just figured it out.” He looks me over, from my face down to my toes, and it isn’t sexual, not how Chris looks at me. But more like a revelatory inspection, full of whatever it is he’s discovered about me. “You aren’t really here, are you?”

I’m gasping, hands wrapped around his wrists, trying to dislodge him. But like Chris, he’s much stronger than me and doesn’t budge.

“I think I maybe envied that of you. That you could go about your life not needing anyone or anything. In some fantasy world where we, where I didn’t exist. That we could beat on you and you would be there the next day and the next, not needing us.”

His breath is making my mind spin, and I struggle against him. “Get off me.”

“Hey, where’s your boyfriend?”

Drunk like this, his line of thought is all over the place.

“None of your buh-buh-business.”

I expect more sneering, but Ryan blinks and his eyes go a bit dim. “So you’re a real fag, then. I should’ve fucken’ known it.”

Arm cocked back, his fist swings around and connects with my face, a loud crack sounding through the trees. I collapse to the side and he’s on me in a second, another punch, and another. Pain lances from my lips and teeth and shoots down through my gums into my cheekbone, trickling white fire into my eye socket. He’s laughing brokenly, hair flopping in his face.

I’m starting to see stars.

But I force them away and stiffen my arms to scratch at him wildly, something sticky and warm trickling to my neck.

“A fag. A fucking fag. On top of it all. With your stuttering! What a goddamn joke!”

“Leave me alone!” I manage to jab a knee upward and knock him sideways, but his hands are clawed in my shirt and I hear it rip. Scrambling up, I heave myself backwards and feel the splintered and cracked wood of my board under my shaking fingers. Grabbing the edge I swing it forward and clap him right on his brow, the skin splitting like a stroke of lightning, blood pouring in a scary crimson wave. His cry is savage as he grabs his face and crawls to his knees.

“Fuck! What the fuck!”

Hurrying to my feet, I land a solid kick on his chest and he sprawls backward, arms up. Defensive but wary. Wide eyes blink up at me, surprised, angry, pebbles of blue in a sea of red. My finger shakes when I point it down at him.

“You leave me the fuck alone. Got it? We have a year left, you p-pig. I’m not guh-guh-going to lehhh-let you pick on me anymore! I’ll hit you with this again. Or my boyfriend will throw you against another tree. Remember that?”

He scowls and pushes to his elbows. I skitter back a step and then hock a wallop of spit at him. It arcs through the air, catching the light before landing with a gross splat on the hollow of his throat. He doesn’t move, only watches as I turn around and flee.

**Chris:**

My tongue feels twice its size when I wake, crust in my eyes, and a kink up my back. I groan and roll over, expecting a warm body there but finding only a cold empty space. 

I lift my head quickly. “Babe?” But the room is empty and the light outside feels wrong. Too late kind of light, like the dimmed wavelengths of an empty auditorium after the last person’s left. 

Practically falling out of the bed, I jam my feet into my trainers and climb out the window, the house echoing with that eerie silence that means it’s empty. Outside, I run down the street and cut through several backyards rather than go through the main street by my house. Something tells me he isn’t there, that he’s at his tree. He has to be. If he’s not with me, it’s always the woods that draw him. It’s later than I originally thought, the air heavy with dusk. When I hop the train tracks, I skid to a halt, sniffing. There’s a creepy, surreal quality to the woods, waiting there for me. A haze hangs over the canopies, like pollen, like fire in the blank spaces between the trees.

A chill runs through me and I hurry forward.

I call his name and hear my voice echo right back to me. Fear clutches my heart and I spin in place, willing him to step out from behind one of the mammoth trunks that rooted so deep in the earth. But I hear nothing, see less. Just snaps of twigs from little critters and, higher above, the chipper twitter of the birds. All bright and careless of me, of my suffering.

“Tom!” I shout again, taking off at a jog toward his tree, the one he marked with a blue button. I spy legs and a set of sneakers peeking out on the opposite side, but the skin color’s all wrong, tanned and hairier. Still, I whisper his name and close the distance. Instead of him there, I find that little shit from before, the one I followed into the woods all those weeks ago. He’s alone, legs bent up against his chest, sniffing into the palm of his hand. Blood is smeared on his face and neck, but it’s dried and flaking in places. It’s from a cut on his forehead, just above his left brow. He doesn’t notice me at first, staring at the cliffs like he’s considering taking a leap from them. Fists clenched, I will him to do it. Be my guest.

“He’s not here,” he says, voice thick with phlegm.

“What did you do?”

His laugh is short, cruel. “I’m sitting here bleeding and you want to know what I did?”

I jump forward and grab his shirt, hauling him up. “What the fuck did you do?”

His eyes widen. “Jesus, man. Calm the fuck down.” I give him another shake, letting the back of his head smack against the jagged bark. He winces. “I waited for him, alright? And he came, singing like the faggot he is.”

My god, he was singing. My heart sinks. Singing means he was happy, only to find this slime waiting for him. I give the surrounding land a cursory glance. Where are you, Tom? I turn back to the boy.

“Say it again. I fucking dare you. Call him that again.”

His lashes fall closed and he shrugs, going limp. I let him go and he collapses to the ground. I point at his face. “He did that to you?”

“Technically, his board did.”

“Which way did he go?”

He gestures vaguely behind him and I’m off like a shot.

“What? You’re not going to even try to hit me again?”

“You’re not worth it!” I shout back. I need to find Tom. He’s my main priority. It’s with relief that I leave the woods, its heavy presence dropping off me like a shroud. I know he loves it here, but it’s something in his bones, I think. Something that is as familiar as blood, almost. I don’t know if I have it in me to love it like he does. But I’ll walk between these trees as long as he’s walking with me.

I’m back on the main road, patting my pockets for my phone but it’s missing. It must be under Tom’s pillow where we stash them before sleeping. I almost go back to his house but swing by mine first, my shoes slapping the pavement hard. When I turn the corner my heart almost jumps out of my chest. He’s sitting outside my window, curled against the wall.

“Babe!”

He looks up as I hurry to him, his face a patchwork of various darkly mottled bruises. His shirt’s pulled up his belly, pale, thin muscles jumping as he breathes, dabbing at his split lip with the hem stained in black patches. Dropping to the ground before him, the soil feels cool against my bare knees. I take his shoulders and peer into his eyes. He has a dark shiner beginning to swell, bottom lip and left cheekbone bruising purple. But he’s smiling, reaching forward to hug me.

Giving little gasps, I can tell he’s still slightly panicked, still wrought with adrenaline. “Your hou-hou-house was c-c-c-closer. I wanted to get out of-of-of sight.”

I hold him to me, tucking him into my neck, absorbing his small tremors. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. I’m so proud of you. You kicked his ass.”

He pulls back, brows puckered. “What do you mean?”

“I went to the woods. I thought you might be there. And I found him under your tree. His face is wrecked. You got him off you?” I ask, cupping his cheek, checking his injuries.

He nods and sniffs, his lashes still wet from tears I wasn’t there to watch him cry.

“That shit.” I flop down beside him and grab him up again. He curls into my side, his board in the dirt beneath his knees. A ragged flare of anger boils to life at the sight of his torn collar. Someone handled him roughly, and I wasn’t there to stop them. There are still red slashes on his skin, just beneath his collarbone.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. That he got to you because you were alone.”

His skin is clammy with sweat, and I rub my cheek into his forehead, the desire for all of him heavy in me. “You were sleeping. And I didn’t know he would be there. Besides, I was so antsy I had to get out.” Something cold drapes around my heart and I now it’s my turn to pull back. “Had to?” His fingers are immediately on my face, in my hair.

“It’s nu-nu-not like that! But something happened while you were asleep.” He tells me about how his mother walked in on us this morning, how he didn’t want her to wake me, their text messages and subsequent conversation.

“So now she knows,” he says softly. “About me, about us.”

A pause.

“You’d never talked to her about how you feel before?”

Tom gives me an are-you-kidding kind of look and I regret the question. Talking is not his forte. “Sorry, you’re right.” Whispering my name he takes my head in both hands and draws me forward, our lips locking, teeth bumping. I taste copper and push my tongue over his for more.

 I’m so overwhelmed by my love for him that I don’t realize when I’ve pushed him to his back in the soil. Legs opening, he gives a small moan, fingers tightening in my hair. A chill so destroying wracks through me I give a hard thrust between his legs and see sparks. “ _Yeah_ ,” he whimpers, breaking away, his eyes taking on that glazed hue I know so well, cheeks spotting with color. The cool moist of the garden patch under my window rises up and envelopes us, smelling of sod and something green. The hedges growing along the wall are all that cover us from the street, but I can still see the edge of the curb from where we lie and it’s igniting my protective instincts. His sweet noises are mounting, clawing at me for more kisses, lifting his lips to meet mine. I give him everything, crowding him to the earth, drawing the indigo blue of the sky to wrap us in obscurity, the stars as his crown. I keep a hand behind his head to guard him from sharp pebbles, his curls soft and bouncy in my palm, and continue thrusting. Between our kisses he moans my name, our cores hard and hot, every nerve ending lit.

“Shh babe, quiet now.” Because with his chin lifted, throat exposed, that lovely mouth parted in pleasure, I have a fierce and demanding desire to be the only one who ever sees him like this, so exposed, so wrecked. His hands climb a shaky path up my spine under the flimsy cotton of m shirt, broken moans spilling into my ear. And even though it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, I place my other hand over his mouth to keep our hiding place secret. His lashes immediately flutter low and his spine arches up, fingers cresting over the curve of my ass to tug me down, harder, faster.

I dry fuck him right there in the dirt, his voice stuttered vibrations in my palm. A car passes out on the street and I freeze, but he continues moving beneath me, a distressed noise lodged in his throat. Eye and cheekbone bruising darker by the minute, I’m careful with the pressure on his face. Still, he shakes me off after a moment and lifts up to kiss me, giving me tongue and scratch marks up my back. I’m so close to coming, but so is he. It’s when his abdominal muscles start to tremble that I know he’s moments from release and I snap my hips faster. His cock is a rod in his jeans, and when he finally crests over his climax, I feel it give a jump and start to pulse. I’m disappointed that all that good cream is wasted in the weave of his boxers.

My hand is back on his mouth, cutting off his cry as I follow him only seconds after. So good, so good, so good, I shudder and rock above him, my erection straining against him, curved forward, seeking. When my vision finally clears and the thunder of an ocean is gone from my ears, I open my eyes. I’m gasping, shaking, the object of beautiful adoration. Tom is still beneath me, thin legs wrapped tightly around my hips. My hand clamped over his mouth, he blinks up at me and caresses my hair, happy tears spilling down his temples and to the soil.

“Babe,” I whisper, yanking my hand back, but he’s grinning and taking my neck, smashing our mouths together. I know his split lip hurts like hell but he’s not shying from the pain or from me. We start giggling at the same time, arms wrapped around each other’s backs, rolling in the dirt.

“When?” he asks, his voice hoarse. “Chris. Chris.”

“My dad will be home any time now. Otherwise I’d have you naked in my bed right now.”

“T-t-tomorrow?”

“Yes. Tomorrow. Anything. Anything for you.” I pepper the uninjured side of his face with kisses, adoring his wide smile and squeezed-shut laughing eyes. He’s life and light and happiness and I want to devour him whole, steal him away, protect him and keep him.

I’m suddenly full of words I need to tell him because I know he’s the only person I would ever say anything of the like to.

“Summer,” I say, breathing hard. “It was something I wasn’t looking forward to, Tom. Even when I lived with my mom. Those random few months before college were like a void I didn’t know how to fill, my insomnia a terrible calamity I didn’t know how to protect myself from. My father’s house was this strange idea in my head, a place I knew but didn’t feel I belonged to anymore. We talk so briefly, but I wonder if it’s me now. If it’s all my doing. If I need to forgive him already. Because I can sense how he wants to reach out but I maybe don’t give him the opportunity. I feel like I scare him sometimes. Walking around the house, he smiles but he keeps his eyes down, like I’m this giant he needs to keep happy. And I wonder if it’s because of what happened. If everyone is afraid of me because they think I’m this time bomb that will flip any moment and hurt them.” Tom is shaking his head, mouthing _no, no_ , but I smooth his curls down and kiss his nose. “I’m not that person. I won’t hurt you, or anyone. I can control this. What happened with Frank. It has to be isolated. Right? Babe, right?”

He gathers me to him and I let him rock me against his chest, just like how he puts me to sleep. “Yes, my sweetheart. Yes. I really think so. I’ve never been afraid of you. Surprised maybe, shocked. Like when you threw Ryan against that tree. I couldn’t breathe.” I huff out a laugh, blinking away my tears. When we look at each other, our faces are an inch apart and I can see the spots of cinnamon in his eyes, islands in those blue oceans. “Your father loves you, Chris. I know he does. I re-re-remember seeing him in your room at the beginning of summer, bef-f-f-ore knowing about your insomnia. You were asleep and he checked on you, made sure you were okay. He bent over you and touched your hair. It was very sweet.” I let my eyes drift down, unaware my dad had done this while I slept.

“He’s left me food before,” I admit, “so I know he would come in.” I sigh and collapse to the side, both of us squished against the side of the house and the hedges. “Maybe I’ll talk to him.”

“it’s not good to keep all that bottled up. It could lead to all sorts of things, bad dreams, anxiety. Insomnia.” He says the last word quietly, even though we both know I suffer from all three.

He’s so pretty, his nose straight and regal, his face soft and smooth, not even baby fuzz.

“I love you,” I whisper.

He tilts his head forward and rests his cheek on mine. “I love you, too.”

**

After we escape from behind the hedges, sitting up and adjusting our jeans and shorts, poking our heads up to see if the coast is clear, it’s nearly dark. I walk him back to his house, creeping around the side when we spy his mother’s car in the drive. More hard kisses, long-fingered hands slinking up my back to scratch me, we pant and heave against the wall, too wired yet. But he eventually crawls through his window and I wave at him, anxiety spiking for just a moment as he recedes like a ghost into his dark room and I’m left by myself. Careful with ceramic gnomes and butterfly pinwheels, I make my way to the front of the house and glance in through the living room window.

I see them there at the dining table, him and his mother. She has that look about her that all mothers get when one of their children is hurt, touching his face gently, inspecting and asking, concern and care and love all weaved together like a blanket that makes you feel safe and okay. He’s talking very slowly, measuring his words, while she cleans his cut and wipes ointment on his bruises.

I hope, very suddenly, that she doesn’t think I did that to him.

Back at my house, I sneak in through my window and change out of my boxers. I couldn’t have possibly creamed more if I tried, the stripes sticky and smeared. Vertigo takes me for a brief moment imagining coming in him so hard I actually spill out of him, my seed sliding down the backs of his thighs. I take a quick shower, tugging out another small load from my excitable cock. In the fogged mirror I see the red lines from Tom’s nails.

The house feels yawning once back in my room and changed again. I know my dad’s home since his truck is outside, so I walk through the kitchen looking for him. The garage light is on and I hear him moving around inside. Angling the door open, I see he’s working at the tool bench in the corner, a wrench in one hand, a motor part in the other.

“Hey, Dad.” He turns around and meets my eyes, his glasses halfway down his nose. He’s a little surprised, but I don’t’ see any fear. “Need any help with anything in here?”

He’s so still for a moment, blinking over at me, and then he smiles, and it reaches up into his eyes.

“Sure, Chris. Go ahead and pull up that stool there.”

Something loosens up inside my chest, relief taking root, and I smile back, already moving forward.

**Tom:**

I’m so excited I can’t even eat anything. My mom put some more ointment on my face before she left for work this morning, and I can tell it’s working because, even though the bruises are still dark, my eye hasn’t swollen up and my split lip appears to be closing.

“Chalk it up to being seventeen,” she’d said, and I laughed. But when she grew serious, I knew what was coming.

“It wasn’t him,” I said before she could accuse. “It was that stupid Ryan Andrews. From school. He’s had it out for me since eighth grade.” She stares at me curiously, and I fidget. “What?”

“You didn’t stutter just now.”

I realized she was right and I grinned at her just as the toaster spit out two golden pieces of bread. I made empty promises to eat something after she left but I jump in the shower as soon as her car is down the street. I wash myself really well, lathering up soapsuds and scrubbing every crook and crevice. Skin pink and gleaming, I put some lotion on my legs and arms, down my belly, around my neck and the small of my back. Patting down my hair I finally give up and dress. The walk to his house takes me only a few minutes, but the day is already warm and sweat begins to bead on my forehead. The pickup truck is gone from the driveway at Chris’s house so I head to his bedroom window and peer inside. He’s pacing by the bed, three quick strides and then a turn, three quick strides again. It’s only been about thirteen hours since he’s slept last, so I don’t think he’s in the in-between just yet.

I rap my knuckles on the glass and he spins around. Smiling, I press my palm flat. He flings the window open and helps me inside, his lips on me immediately. His own hair is wet from a shower, his skin smelling of soap, and I take a deep breath to memorize.

“I was nervous,” he says, cradling my face, eyes flitting over my bruises. He touches them gently. “I cleaned like crazy, and showered like twice.” His room is definitely neater, shoes tucked under the bed, clothes in the hamper, closet closed, nothing thrown about. I giggle and start to tug his shirt up. He yanks it off and there he is, sculpted and lean. His arms and legs have a thin film of golden hairs, but he’s so smooth over his torso and chest and the long plane of his back, my fingers trailing over each bump and groove. Even I have a tiny patch of thin hairs between my pectorals, but not him. Curiously adorable.

“You smell so good,” he moans, sniffing behind my ear, dragging me closer with an arm. The other pushes my jeans low, and after toeing my shoes off I lift my legs to help him. His mouth is on me everywhere, my feet moving backward to the bed, his thighs bumping mine, spreading my legs. Collapsing back, we bounce against each other, exhaling our names. There by the pillow is the bottle of lube and my heart skips eagerly, but it’s easy to ignore it as he mouths at my neck, sucking gently at the rise of my Adam’s apple, a big hand sliding up my leg to curve along my buttock. I’m tugging on his shorts, he’s yanking on my boxers, and then we’re both naked, my cock flopping out.

He goes starry-eyed a bit, staring at it. “You’re amazing.”

All heated length, from our joined lips to the nubs of our toes we are pressed as one, our groins furred and rolling together, balls full and heavy and hanging freely, our cocks stirring to life. He pushes to his elbows and keeps our hips flush, both of us gasping as we fill and harden, squirming and inching, longer and longer.

“You’re really gorgeous,” he praises, full cheeks pink, moist hair hanging in his face. I push the long strands back, stroking my thumbs over each brow, loving how low his thick lashes shudder, as if my touch is the best thing he’d ever felt.

“You’re not sleepy?”

“Fuck no.”

I laugh, delighted, and he tosses me a wolfish grin before catching my mouth in another hard kiss. I’m ready to be consumed by him, widening my jaw to swallow his moans, our tongues winding and beloved. He gives little thrusts, and I’m enamored anew, his every instinct to fuck something, anything, me. I want his seed inside, his _cum_. He gushes thickly, copiously, so much of it, and I imagine what it will feel like when he finally climaxes. I hope I feel every pulse. A wicked thrill buzzes through me at the thought because I’ve tasted him with my tongue and now I want him deep inside where no one else has been, where only he will stake claim.

He traces a hand down to my abdomen, flattening it to my belly button. My chest is a wave, rising and falling, rising and falling, I can’t catch my breath, my heart beating a thousand times a minute. I’m a hummingbird, delicate and light, but he handles me so carefully, eyes impossibly bluer than the ocean he fears.

“You’re a beauty,” I whisper, and he blushes like a rose. My darling, my love, mine.

When he reaches for the bottle of lube I feel my chest constrict for a short second. It’s happening. I’ll be touched in a place no one has ever seen, much less explored. Not even by my own hand, too desperate for an easy orgasm whenever I’ve watched porn to focus on anything but my dick. And now he will see me there, will stroke and push into me, might even place a kiss there. I’m shaking like a leaf at the thought and he pauses, concern deep in his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

I nod, clasping his biceps. Don’t leave me, don’t go, stay.

“We can stop whenever—.”

I shake my head, pleading _._

He hurries after that, uncapping the bottle and squeezing a puddle into his palm. I already feel so exposed with him kneeling between my legs, but I widen my thighs even further when he bends low and traces two fingers between the cleft under my sac. A little further and he’s at my entrance, my skin tingling, the pad of his finger nudging, testing. My spine stiffens and he hushes me gently, a wide hand on my chest. I hold onto his wrist and watch him study me, spreading my cheeks, more fingers.

“So pretty,” he murmurs. “So pink and tiny.” His eyes are wide when he glances up at me, as if worried he won’t fit. But I know he will, I’ve seen other men take cocks as big as his, even bigger.

I nod again, nudging the back of his thighs with my heels. He snaps to and angles his hand high to let the lube pour over my hole. It’s warm and dripping, thick and runny. He smears it on me and tests my give again, but when I wince he drops over me to kiss and comfort with sweet whispers in my ear. I rasp our cheeks together and hold him in my arms, and when his finger finally breaches he groans at the cry I give.

“Yeah, babe.” His breath is a soft gust on my face, his finger beginning a slow slide in and out of me. It’s strange and sudden, intrusive even, but I relax under his care, nodding for him to keep going. I can feel him on the inside, long finger probing, massaging my tight inner walls. Breathing is a little difficult, my stomach tense, throat closing. But having him on me helps, because I’m reminded of lullabies and ocean-jumps, tree-climbing and the glint of silver-spun twine jewelry. I can’t stop kissing him, his lips are so full, so impatient for me. But neck kisses are the best, when he drags his mouth down the line of my jaw and sucks just to the side of my throat. Chills erupt all over me and I shiver, moaning for him to never stop, to live here with me, forever.

Just as I’m getting used to it, he adds more lube and another finger and this time I clench up, my legs snapping shut. They catch on either side of his hips, but he holds me open.

“It’s okay, babe. You’re fine. I need to stretch you. Let me do it. Okay?”

Tears spring to my eyes at the echoing pain, but I nod. “Okay. Gimm-mme a minute.” Holding his two fingers inside me, he watches as I take a deep breath and roll my hips, my hole swallowing them in.

He gulps and nods his approval, eyes sharp between my legs. At my murmur he starts pumping his wrist again and I feel something begin to loosen.

“You’re opening up,” he says, awed. Giddy smile. “You’re opening up for me.”

“Another?” I say and he readily tries a third finger, squirming it in and pumping some more. The fit is tight, the stretch uncomfortable, but his fingers are long and feel good sliding in. “Yes,” I moan, arching my back and liking the squelch of our movements. He starts a rhythm, his strong hand driving his three steepled fingers into me. I think we both feel at the same time once I’m ready, because he pulls his fingers out as I reach for the lube, dripping some over his erection and rubbing it over the shaft and head. “Hurry. Hurry, hurry. B-but slow. Slow, please.”

Holding me under my knee, he lifts my leg and takes himself in hand. My skin is buzzing, my head filled with flickering lights, he’s so beautiful, so strong, a myth. “My god I love you,” I moan and he grins before lining himself up and pushing.

My cry is tiny and ragged.

It hurts. We both tense and I scramble to hold his elbows, gain some leverage, one hand over skin the color of sand, the other in brambles of inked roses and vines. He’s straining to hold still and I’m straining to stay conscious, his tattoos a mirage to hold on to. Only the tip of him is in, nudging short centimeter by centimeter. I’m being split by a pipe, but he’s perfect and trembling and groaning my name.

“Do I stop?” His lips barely move. Propped up on both arms, vibrating, he’s suddenly too far and I reach for him.

“Don’t stop. Let me hold you.” Dropping down, he flattens himself on me and nuzzles my neck. “Go. Now, go.”

Another inch and my teeth grit, nails clawing into his back. His hips pull back and then stutter forward, stretch, stretch, more, _more._ Back and in, back and in, until he’s finally inside completely, entirely, whole. My heart swells with relief, the crest building in my ribcage, bubbling up my throat, pushing through my teeth. “ _Fuck_ ,” I sob, dropping my head, eyes squeezed shut. He’s kissing my chin, my jaw, the tender underside, and I blink through my tears, feeling him shift inside me, heavy, big. Stuck in me, he stays put for a minute, our bodies gently adjusting, soaking in heat neither of us is used to. Our eyes meet, his voice a throaty rasp. “Can I move?”

Dark widow’s peak, pupils blown, lashes thick, he studies me, soaks me in, and waits.

I nod, whispering yes, fingers clawing into his spine to get him going. Snapping forward, he shoves and I go sliding on the bed, surprise making me laugh and cling to him harder. Pulling back slowly, he starts a slow pace, in and out, in and out, and I’m beginning to understand just how this boy will drive me mad with pleasure. It feels _good_ having him in me, after all the burn and discomfort, but to be pinned down and handled by him, it’s so much of all that I’ve ever wanted I feel lightheaded.

“Hey,” he whispers, clasping my head in both hands. “Don’t go fainting on me.”

I grin at him, my body rocking as he thrusts and thrusts.

“But actually, it would be kind of hot if you did.”

Something surges in my ribcage and I groan, grabbing his head and sucking on his bottom lip.

My cock is rock hard between us, jostled from Chris’s movements, leaking giant drops of sticky clear fluid. It’s pooling on my belly, linked by the thinnest strand to the bulbous tip, red and swollen.

“Does it hurt still? Is it hurting?”

I shake my head, kissing his nose, his cheek, his eyelashes. The glide is much easier, my body loose enough to take him.

“You can go…a little harder,” I whisper, and he draws back, eyes wide.

“Can I?”

“Yeah.”

Propping himself up on both hands, he snaps his pelvis forward and I heave under him, sparks shredding brightly in my brain. He’s the biggest turn-on of my life, my body attuned to his so that when he breathes I exhale, when he dips low I rise up, hips colliding almost violently, our desperation to be closer, closer, making us frantic.

Hitching my leg over his elbow, he bends me in half, whispering filthy praise at my flexibility, his breath in my ear making goosebumps race over me. His belly strokes my erection with every thrust, and I resist taking hold of it, adoring how my body is beginning to sing for him, because of him, his force drawing out of me an energy that leaves me breathless, gasping, thrumming with life. Something is beginning to build in me, something warm and heavy and insistent. He’s focused and a little rough, pounding in hard, breathing harshly. I push at his waist, wanting to see, and he lifts himself to his elbows.

“Am I—?”

“Keep g-g-going. Faster.”

He does, hair swaying. It’s when he sits back on his heels and pulls me over his lap, rolling my hips to spear into me, that something twinges way deep inside and I twist my hands into the sheets.

“Chris,” I whimper, a tiny peep, eyes on where my cock lies reddened and near bursting. He thrusts in and I jolt, the rush of pleasure up my belly into my throat so intense that my vision goes white. Between us, my cock gives wild little jumps, spewing white cream in smooth arcs over me. Arching, I scream and thrash, waves of it eating me alive, drowning me. Something winks in my sight and I shudder once more, collapsed and on the verge of twilight.

“Fuck,” he breathes, watching me orgasm, lips snarled, big hands curled into the meat of my buttocks. He hauls me to him, stuffing himself deep, once, twice, and on the third time he groans out a cry and squeezes me in his arms so tightly, I lose my breath.

“Yeah…yeah…Chris. There, sweetheart. There.”

We stay like this for a long while, both breathing, just holding each other. Something begins creeping out of me. I can feel it tickling my skin. He goes soft and rouses from my embrace, eyes electric, dulled lightning. He meets my gaze, shy, hesitant, and then smiles so wide he starts me giggling. Holding my hips still, he pulls out slowly, watching my face for winces. I feel gaping after he’s out.

“Am I still…open?”

“No, babe. You closed right up. That’s amazing.”

I blush scarlet and hold my arms out to him. He drapes himself over me and dips his head. Our kiss is slow and deep, familiar, my favorite thing in the world.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Yes. And no!” Relief softens his face. “I’m more than great, Chris. I’m a c-c-completely different person. You’ve filled me and now I’m whole.”

“And you’ve healed me,” he says, eyes tracing my face. I must look confused because he chuckles. “I may still have some trouble sleeping, but it’s not like before. You have to know that. I don’t hurt like I used to. Not since meeting you. Since sleeping with you.”

“I can’t te-tell you how happy I am that you found in me what I’ve found in you.”

We doze for a long while, our bodies sore and spent. I dream of elephant trunks and wind-rasp of seagull wings. I don’t think he dreams at all, which is good, and safe. The light rotates around the room before hunger wakes us. When I feel him at my back, mouthing at the nape of my neck, I’m already hard. A sharp click of plastic as he uncaps the lube and then he lifts my leg, slipping in much easier than before. Lying on my side, tucked into his chest, he pushes and pushes until I’m sprawled on my belly, covering me like a blanket. The fit is just as tight, but with nearly no pain, only a vague discomfort that fades as soon as he gains a quicker rhythm. Straddling the small of my back, he fucks into me, gasping my name, my erection caught beneath us.

“Come here,” he pleads in a half-growl and yanks me up to my hands and knees.

“Oh god,” I manage, fantasy, fantasy, something I’ve always wanted. “Yes, hard. Please.”

His hand snakes up my shoulder and around my throat, where he holds me gently, squeezing very lightly. Between my legs his balls bounce against mine, and I feel so animalistic, so wild, savage and free, that I sob out quietly. _Yes._

Pulling me closer to him, he licks right up the middle of my spine and curls his other hand into my hair, tugging. Beautiful colors burst in my eyes and I start to tilt, but he keeps me upright, hand on my throat and in my curls. My own reach behind me to hold his waist, the only thing I see is the ceiling with its pockmarked design.

“Come for me. Babe, come. Tom. Tom, please.” My cock bobs up and down, slap-slapping against my stomach.

“Yes,” I manage, my throat bobbing under his palm. “’m close.” The angle hits true when he thrusts up and I sink down. That rush of pleasure rushes through every vein, every vessel, and my muscles clench hard. Vaguely, in the background, he curses and stutters to a halt. I spurt ribbons over the sheets, held up by his arms only. Head resting back on his shoulder, I’m incoherent and a bit deaf, crashing surf in my head. Very gently, he tilts us forward and lays me on my stomach. I moan weakly, my cock still giving small pulses. But he’s hammering into me again, grunting above me, a wide hand between my shoulders to hold me still. I love being restrained by him, I love that I can trust him to do that.

When he comes, it’s thick and overflowing, drizzling out of me. So strong, this myth of mine, so noble. To be chosen by him, to choose him from the many, I couldn’t find enough song lyrics in the world to explain. My heart is content to simply feel him, and know.

“Will you be mine?” he asks, flopping down beside me.

“Always,” I sigh, smiling, blissed with relief and peace.

**

The rest of the summer is spent preparing for school, him for college and me for my last year of high school. We collect our textbooks and planners, stuffing new binders with blank paper and replacing old stubby pencils and dried pens with fresh ones. We lie out on the beach the night of his birthday and make out until our lips are swollen and I’m sporting new bruises, his, on my collarbones. After, I walk him back to his house and climb in through his window with him. He comes in me three times that night, and I lay beside him just as sated, sticky with fluids splattered on my belly and seeping out of me. I rock him to sleep, humming a soft song, carding my fingers through his hair. His soft lips at my neck sometimes whisper my name.

My face has cleared of all signs of my confrontation with Ryan, who has made himself scarce these last couple of weeks before school. I’m not sure how things will be once classes start, but I’m not afraid of him anymore. I know I can hurt him as much as he’s ever hurt me, it’s just my choice not to that defines my better character. Chris agrees.

“You’re so much better than them, babe. You are a better person and above them all. They’re jealous little shits that they’ve never been able to get under your skin. But me,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “I love being under your skin.”

“In it, more like,” I say, tugging his ear. He growls sweetly into my hair, and I blush.

I’m personally proud that he didn’t sink so low as to retaliate against Ryan that day he found him bleeding in the woods. It’s a mystery to me that he would hurt his mother’s boyfriend willingly. I know from some emails he’s exchanged with his counselor that she seems optimistic about his continued improvement. I just think he needed to catch up on his rest. Anyone could snap when deprived of sleep. He only desired the right person to do it with.

“Stupid brain,” he likes to say, but I always disagree, and he always reads my face just right. “Enough of those brows. Kiss me.”

I invited him for dinner one evening and he came over dressed in pressed flats and a lovely blue button-down. It really brought out his eyes, which my mom seemed captivated with for a moment when he walked in the door, holding out a single tulip for her. “You’re very pretty,” he told her. “Tom looks a lot like you.” And then his face turned beet red and he shuffled back a step. My mom gave a surprised laugh, one of her real, throaty ones, and took his arm to lead him inside. She and I baked our own pizza and served it with a salad, talking over soda and water at the dining table. His tattoos were concealed by his long sleeves but I knew, in great detail, what lay hidden underneath. I’d licked a rose petal just that morning.

My mom asked about his parents (divorced), about his college goals (engineering at the university), about how we met.

Here he smiles, and stabs carefully at his salad. “He rode by my window on his board and I thought I was hallucinating.”

I kick him playfully under the table. “Truth is you saved me.”

He grins. “I was only trying to help.”

“You scattered them like roaches!”

“Only because they are!”

I laugh, and he laughs, and we glance down at our plates, and my mom stares at the two of us, something glowing on her face. It looks like understanding.

Chris’s dad is a quiet man, very polite, solidly built like his son, only smaller. He called in take-out when it was my turn for the dinner invite, and we ate lounging on the living room sofa, a college football game on the television. It was relaxed and easy, the three of us in the cozy company of their house, Chris twining his ankles between mine, familiar. His dad barely batted an eye at Chris’s introduction of me as his boyfriend, only shook my hand and welcomed me in. All my nerves dissipated when we sat down and he said calmly, “So now I can connect that nest of blond curls to an actual face.”

Chris rolled his eyes – _Dad_ – but I knew that it meant he had walked in on us one of the times Chris and I had fallen asleep in his room, that he’d seen me, seen _us_ wrapped together in our moist summer clothes and coiled limbs, and thought nothing wrong of it. Although, from how I knew he treated Chris those times I’d spied him in Chris’s room while Chris slept – careful with his steps, leaving him food, checking that he was breathing okay – it was always apparent to me that he was a gentle man, somewhat gruff at first, scarred and rough around the edges from his hard work at the quarry. And maybe it was something to understand that the reason he didn’t fight as hard to get Chris back after the divorce was because he wasn’t the kind of person to force himself on others, that he believed Chris would come back to him when he was ready, when he needed his father the most. And by the friendly smile shared between him and his son, I could see they were on their way to understanding this too.

**Chris:**

School started a few weeks ago and I was right about the separation anxiety. I got a job at the union art gallery, helping organize shows, arranging opening ceremonies and artist visits and artist talks, patching and repainting walls, installing entire shows by myself. Doing homework at the front desk when the gallery is empty as a tomb, echoing with the soft music I put on from my phone. It’s an easy job, and I’m grateful to have it. That and my surveys, I’m hoping to save money for some things I have planned. So far, my insomnia has calmed. I’m still awake for longer than what’s considered normal, but it helps with all-nighters and writing term papers. It’s when I’m back in Tom’s arms, in his bed or mine, that my body knows to begin to shut down. My eyelids get heavy, my thoughts slow down, my voice grows quiet, and I seek his embrace like a child, going limp as he rocks me.

I like talking about my sleep and my feelings with Angelina Abrams, my counselor. She helps me think about things that I might not have figured out on my own. She reminds me of Tom in this way, both quietly wiser than most people I’ve met. To my immense relief, she considers what happened with Frank to be an isolated incident.

“I think you’re learning things about your anger, and how it manifests around the men in your life, to know when you might be a danger to others. I personally think you’re not. You have a bit of rage, but so does everyone. You hit a precipice that was not aided by your lack of sleep. Now that you’re keeping a sleep journal, counting your waking hours, and actually getting more rest, I think you’re going to be just fine, with time.”

I think so too.

Me and Tom text all day, calling each other during our lunch breaks. But it’s enough to get me through the times we can’t communicate, when I’m in lecture and he’s stuck in some group project. It’s enough to get me through my long hours until I can finally get home and find him waiting for me at the curb outside my window. He’s so beautiful, still ruddy cheeked even though fall is settled in nicely. He’s started wearing sweaters and scarves, jumping up to meet me with a hard embrace, his wicked lips on mine, his skin cold from the chill in the air. And then we fall into my room and take our time with the stretch, with the scratches and the hickeys. He rides me eagerly, or presents himself on all fours, and I don’t have enough energy or seed to take him as often as I would like, as he demands. But it’s so fun to try, getting him off with my fingers and tongue, my cock resting in between. We’ve shared so many orgasms, witnessing every flush of his skin, every fluttering lash, his trembles sustaining me with life. And his noises, his small, beautifully deep voice. It makes my head spin. And still I want a million more with him.

He’s a joyous partner, my Tom, happy and willing.

He’s my heart.

He turns eighteen in February, and even though we still live with our parents for now, I want to ask him to move in with me when I feel we’re both ready. I can see us with a place of our own. He’ll garden like his mother, placing tiny treasures in the soil, fairies and butterfly pinwheels, and maybe his jewelry. I’ll have little projects in our garage, like my own dad. I think it’s okay if, in the end, we are just like our parents.

We’ll cook together and make love, and walk through the trees, and maybe sing to some children, someday.

Because still he sings. I love it so much, his voice. I liken it to the tender and unique ability of falling asleep, something only recently re-learned with his help. Slipping behind that curtain of sand and stars, letting the waves take me. I liken it to his excitement after a day separated, stuttering through all his happy gossip about school and what he did for this or that class, or what he’s read that he thinks I’ll like, asking me about my coursework and if I’m liking college.

And I do like college, I like the ambience and the loose structure of it. I like learning. Feeling rested is a plus, otherwise I might get overwhelmed, but I’ve been handling it just fine. I like my art gallery job. I like him the most. I like how unselfconscious he’s become since we’ve met, stuttering and not hating himself, at least not around me. I know he still struggles with it, like I still struggle with sleep sometimes. But when personal growth involves a full heart and trusting companionship, maybe the road won’t seem so bleak.

This is something I talk to Angelina about a lot. She gets it.

A little after midnight, he snuck into my room, curling himself around me like a kitten, his body freezing from the air outside. We slept a few hours more and then got up to dress and go our separate ways for the time being. But it’s Friday evening and he’s waiting for me on the curb. I stash my bike in the garage and he takes my hand. Together, we walk through the side street and over to the train tracks, the trees waiting for us just beyond them. Barren of leaves, their spindly branches sway in the wind, cold and bitter, and I’m suddenly struck with a new tattoo idea.

He and I are wrapped in clothing, a scarf around his neck, my jacket zipped to my throat. He tucks his arm through my elbow and walks pressed tightly to me. Dry and forgotten leaves crackled under our feet, but I pick out his melody easily. Head down, his voice is a little stifled by the scarf. I know the band. They’re pretty good, and so is his voice. Laying his head on my shoulder, he sings:

_But I will love you constantly_  
_There's precious little else to me_  
_And though we may cry, we must stay alive._

He tilts his head back, exposing his long and pale throat, but his eyes are closed and he’s smiling up at the trees, squeezing my arm sweetly. 

_Let my blood only run out when my world decides_  
_There is no way out of your only life_  
_So run on_  
_\--run on._

 

 

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! xo


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